Mean Girls 2...It's official! By Sierra Blanchard

Mean Girls 2 is officially happening. So exciting!! Meaghan Martin, Maiara Walsh, Jennifer Stone and Nicole Anderson have been cast to become the new plastics. The first movie was great...these disney darlings have a lot of work ahead of them on this straight to television sequal!

Just Jared got the scoop on who will play who in the second installment of Mean Girls. Walsh is set to play the lead plastic opposite JONAS L.A. Star Nichole Anderson as Hope(another plastic), Camp Rocks very own mean girl Meaghan Martin as the lead Jo, and Wizards of Waverly place's mortal Jennifer Stone as Abby (the target and subject of ultimate plastic Meanness).

The story line is based around the new girl Jo who befriends an outcast Abby in exchange for Abby's wealthy father paying for the college of Jo's dreams. They team up to take on the mean girls. Who will come out victorious? Friendship or popularity? I know that I will be watching to find out! Will you?

Lindsay Lohan: Stick close to Kim Kardashian by Nikky Raney

The recent news regarding Lindsay Lohan makes it even more important that she sticks by a close friend, and Kim Kardashian is a great friend to Lohan to have during this tough time.

Christine Quinn corrupt NYC by Suzannah B. Troy

The New York Daily News editorial section has a scathing piece exposing Christine Quinn finding any way possible to grab power, abuse power and the piece exposes a list of shameful City Council Members who claim they are against "lulus" -- extra pay and take the money anyway.   Lulus like slush money  is not kosher and leaves a lot of room for abuse of power.

Christine Quinn belongs in jail for aiding and abetting Mike Bloomberg in denying us a referendum and pushing through a 3rd term.  Read Benjamin Lesser's powerful piece on her and other city council members getting what sounds like kick backs for tax payer money they allotted to shady developers.

Read the last 2 paragraphs which expose corrupt Christine Quinn.  How much money has she and her staff burned through - tax payer money hiring top defense lawyers that specialize in White Collar Crime including Sullivan & Cromwell, same firms as Goldman Sachs hired. I called John Liu's office and asked him to please put the costs on NYC gov website or his comptroller website and asked if we can have an APP for our Iphones on NYC gov "spending" or I prefer another term re: tax payer money.

The powerful editorial by The New York Daily News also points out the fake hypocrites -- all talk saying the right thing but  their actions prove they are full of -- insincerity.

From The New York Daily News article:

"Ten members told Citizens Union they support an end to lulus but took the money anyhow. They are Fernando Cabrera, Margaret Chin, Daniel Dromm, Julissa Ferreras, Helen Foster, Sara Gonzalez, Karen Koslowitz, Darlene Mealy, Rosie Mendez and Diana Reyna. They are hypocrites."

I went to the Jane Jacobs Street Signing where I caught the corrupt Christine Quinn passing herself off as Jane Jacobs and I protested her corrupt dealings.  It was almost one year ago and I was about to turn 47 and I was wearing a recession bikini top.  If you go to the YouTube link of me protesting Quinn in the text portion you can find a series of articles I posted that expose Christine Quinn's corrupt dealings.  There are so many I probably don't have Jim Dwyer's piece and The Village Voice's expose.

Now I am about to turn 48 years old and NY may be heading in to a depression as the clowns of Albany have refused to get the budget gap closed.  The budget was suppose to be balanced April 1st of this year and again we are moving towards a government shut down.

I wish we could throw all these politicos in jail and as New York sinks further in to a an economic crisis that many rich won't feel the same is true for corrupt politicians who find every possible way to give themselves money for all their hard work.

From Albany to City Hall, for politicos, denial is the new crack cocaine.

Oscar Grant verdict: Mehserle involuntary manslaughter sparks protest

Oakland, California is now what it hates most: the center of attention in America for a reason it does not want: the Oscar Grant verdict.

Former BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and not 2nd degree murder, or 1st degree murder as many had desired.

The announcement of the ruling had many looking for Oakland to erupt in a wave of violence and property damage that didn't happen while the Sun was up.

These three videos below show the giant, peaceful protest, which started on the corner of 14th and Broadway and with one-fifth of its ranks being members of the media, and was moved into the middle of 14th and Broadway. The result was the largest peaceful, traffic-stopping protest ever held in downtown Oakland.

This first video shows what happened just before the street protest:



The second video is from the middle of the protest at 14th and Broadway:



The third video features a the dramatic raising of an enormous flag on the street pole at the Northeast corner of 14th and Broadway that reads "Oakland Says Guilty."



The general view shared was many were proud of Oakland for having a protest without violence. That was until the Oakland Police and The California Highway Patrol got antsy and decided to do something.

That something was to move in and essentially work to compress the crowd, with predictably ugly results. This blogger went to upload the first set of videos, which is why that chaos is not represented in the videos you will see. And with that, what happened was not on the scale of 2009. The question many are asking is why did the police take violent action when it wasn't necessary?

As I write this, I'm in a new bar called Geisha about three blocks away from 14th and Broadway. It's at 316 14th Street in Downtown Oakland.

San Francisco's Traffic Tickets Helping with Budget Problems

A recent spike in traffic tickets issued by the San Francisco Police Department, has added more than $1 million to the city’s coffers and is obviously a significant help to the budget deficit. Still, city officials claim that one thing has nothing to do with the other. “Was that some kind of plot to increase revenue for the city? I can sit here and say, absolutely not,” SFPD Deputy Chief John Murphy said. Some local residents disagree. “I think it’s out of control. It’s criminal,” said a man who works on the Broadway strip. According to Deputy Chief Murphy, the SFPD deployed a “violence reduction unit” two years ago – and that is the reason for the uptick in tickets. “So the officers were stopping the vehicles, they’re talking the conveyance away and by taking that conveyance away, they were preventing drive-by shootings.”

Journalism 101: Photo Credit & Watermarking by Nikky Raney

x-posted at NikkyRaney.com

Episode 1: Take your own photos & do not watermark a photo that you did not take yourself. Watermarking is for photographers that do not want someone else to take credit for their images, and websites may also have watermarking for the same purpose. Always credit where you got your photo & who took it. If you cannot take the photo yourself then maybe make an infographic, graphic, or a chart of some sort to go alongside the story.

Academy (AMPAS) News: Academy expands Special or "Visual" Effects category to five

The AMPAS Building

For decades the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has presented three films for consideration for Best Special or "Visual" Effects at the Academy Awards. But that will change for the 83rd Annual Academy Awards; now there will be five nominees.

In finalizing the rules for the 2011 Oscar event and telecast at its June 22nd meeting, the AMPAS Board of Governors elected to expand the list from three to five, the most significant rule change to come out of that meeting.

Even when it was possible to have up to five Oscar nominees for Visual Effects between 1977 and 1979, only once, in 1979, were five movies actually recognized. Between 1980 and 1995, two or three films could be nominated. But by 1996, rules were changed so that exactly three could be nominated.

Why the change now? While that was not determined as of this writing, Leslie Unger, The Academy's Director of Communications, explained the process:

Each year, the various branch executive committees review the rules that govern the relevant categories. So in this case, that would be the Visual Effects Branch Executive Committee. The discussion within that committee led to a recommendation to the Awards Rules Committee, which endorsed the change and subsequently recommended it to the Board of Governors.

But the new Visual Effects nomination number is not the only change to come out of the June 22nd meeting. AMPAS also elected to make the rules for for entries in the Animated Feature Film category uniform with the "greater than 40 minutes" rule that applies to the other film award areas, and the overall language was changed to read as follows:

An animated feature film is defined as a motion picture with a running time of greater than 40 minutes, in which movement and characters’ performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique. Motion capture by itself is not an animation technique. In addition, a significant number of the major characters must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture’s running time.

Unger says the other rules changes added up to "housekeeping." The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 83rd Annual Academy Awards will be presented on Sunday, February 27, 2011, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center, and televised live on the ABC Television Network.