"Little Miss Sunshine" to Broadway, emus on the loose and a farewell to a broadcasting legend

- One of the biggest hits at the box office in 2006 is making its way to the world of theater and I think it’s actually pretty freaking cool even though I’m not normally a huge theater guy. "Little Miss Sunshine" the musical will premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse next February, following in the shoes of movies that became plays like "Legally Blonde" and "Shrek.” Of course, the movie portrayed a dysfunctional extended family making its way across the country in an erratic VW Mini-Bus on the way to a children’s beauty pageant in California. The film version was a massive hit at Sundance in 2006 and was nominated for four Academy Awards on the strength of great performances by Alan Arkin and Abigail Breslin. The question for this play is whether the irreverent humor of the film can properly translate to stage, but I say any time you can mix in a heroin-using, foul-mouthed grandfather, a moody teenage son who has taken a vow of silence until he becomes a Navy fighter pilot, a business-obsessed dad with a career on the rocks and an irrepressible little girl with a dream to become a beauty queen despite not having the quintessential pageant looks or background, I say you have to do it. At this point, there is no cast for the play and all we know is that the oddball dark comedy is going to happen at some point. Translating the movie into a musical will be tough, no doubt, as people don’t spontaneously break into song to communicate, but with the right cast, this is a great story that could definitely become entertaining in the hands of the right writers and director………..

- A melancholy happy trails to a true broadcasting legend who passed away Tuesday. The incomparable Ernie Harwell, who spent the 55 years - 55 years! - as a steady presence on the airwaves, 42 of them as the play-by-play voice of the Detroit Tigers. Harwell, who courageously battled cancer and passed away at the age of 92, was revered for his rich voice, smooth Southern speech and cache of catch phrases that made listening to a baseball game fun, easy and interesting for nearly any baseball fan. Epesically in pre-Internet times, when listening to a game on the radio was how kids and families spent summer evenings, there was a tremendous connection with the radio voice of your favorite team and for multiple generations of Tigers fans, Harwell was that voice. He came into the living rooms, car stereos and headphones of millions of fans and was a true gentleman and kind soul off the air. Anyone who encountered him inevitably came away with tons of great stories of how Ernie Harwell, giant of broadcasting, always had time for htem, knew their name and treated them as if they were the legend and not him. Harwell died Tuesday at about 7:30 p.m. in his apartment at Fox Run Village and Retirement Center in the Detroit suburb of Novi, with his wife of 68 years, Lulu, and his two sons and two daughters were at his side, Spicer said. His passing was noted by pretty much anyone with a pulse in the state of Michigan or the worlds of sports and broadcasting, as it should be. "We'll miss you, Ernie Harwell. You'll forever be the voice of summer," Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm tweeted. One of the coolest stories about Harwell is that he was, as a broadcaster, acquired by the Brooklyn Dodgers for a player in 1948. He retired from broadcasting in 2002, having called thousands of games and touched millions of lives along the way. He announced Detroit games on radio from 1960 to 1991, again in 1993 and from 1999 to 2002. When he signed off following his final game in 2002, Harwell went out with the sort of class and dignity that had become his hallmark along the way. "It's time to say goodbye, but I think goodbyes are sad and I'd much rather say hello. Hello to a new adventure. I'm not leaving, folks. I'll still be with you, living my life in Michigan -- my home state -- surrounded by family and friends," he said at the time. Even after he revealed in September that he'd been diagnosed with inoperable cancer of the bile duct, he was the picture of class and dignity. "Whatever happens, I'm ready to face it," Harwell said to The Associated Press on Sept. 4, 2009. "I have a great faith in God and Jesus." In a fitting tribute, Harwell's body will lie in repose at Comerica Park on Thursday beginning at 7 a.m. and "until the last person who wishes to pay their respects" has done so, his friend and attorney J. Gary Spicer said. "It might be an all-night vigil," Spicer accurately said. A truly moving moment came as the Tigers were in Minnesota on Tuesday night and the Twins announced during the seventh-inning stretch that Harwell had died. Fans honored him with a standing ovation and the response from people in baseball and broadcasting has been overwhelming ever since. "Without question, Ernie was one of the finest and most distinguished gentlemen I have ever met," commissioner Bud Selig said. So a very melancholy happy trails to Ernie Harwell, who truly made the world a better place that he was in it and will be sorely missed now that he is gone………..

- NOOOOOOOOO! This is NOT happening, right? The famed Red Shirts of Thailand aren’t actually accepting a deal with their government that will end nearly two months of raging, bitchin’ protests, right? Sadly, it does appear to be true. These sweet anti-government protesters who have been blocking off central Bangkok, raiding and looting buildings and causing havoc appear to have reached a deal with the government, according to the group’s leaders in a speech to demonstrators Tuesday. Leaders of the protest movement admitted that they had sold out, er, agreed on a five-point deal (Point #1 - Selling out and giving up?) being offered by the government, including a call for new elections in November. However, dissidence lovers like myself will be happy to know that they will not end their demonstrations until Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva announces when he will dissolve parliament. Amazingly, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive when the deal was announced, with protestors giving a freaking roar of approval. Sure, I understand their jubilation over a deal that appears to remove the threat of a violent crackdown on the protesters, but violent crackdowns and the resulting brawls in the street between police and protestors are what I love the most. Downtown Bangkok just won't be the same without thousands of anti-government bringing the center of Thailand's capital to a standstill for weeks on end, looking to evict Vejjajiva's government from office. Is that government any more legitimate today than it was when you started protesting? If not, keep taking it to the streets, dammit! Are you the Red Shirts or the nancy-boy, pink polka dot shirts? Your protests have choked off much of the city’s tourism and rising smoke, gunfire and hand-to-hand combat between security forces and protestors have become regular (and awesome) parts of daily life in Bangkok. Now, much of that will go away and our lives will be worse for it………..

- Not that Facebook’s chat system didn’t suck enough already, but a security flaw revealed today by a popular tech blog may make users of the social networking site feel even worse. Already dealing with chat messages that don’t send, chat windows that disappear, problems logging in on a regular basis and more, Facebook chat users now know that it is possible to eavesdrop on the private live chats of your Facebook friends by previewing your profile through the site's privacy settings. That nice morsel of info was revealed by the blog TechCrunch in a video post today. The video shows the security flaw in detail and in response to the security issue, Facebook shut down its chat function on Wednesday to address the issue. "When we received reports of the problem, our engineers promptly diagnosed it and temporarily disabled the chat function," an e-mailed statement from Facebook read. "We also pushed out a fix to take care of the visible friend requests which is now complete. Chat will be turned back on across the site shortly. We worked quickly to resolve this matter, ensuring that once the bug was reported to us, a solution was quickly found and implemented." TechCrunch writer Steve O'Hear is the one who found the issue and he wrote about the issue in a post accompanying the video. "I know Facebook wants us to share more information and open up, but I’m not sure that this is quite what they had in mind," O'Hear wrote on the blog. In the video, he can be seen accessing a friend's (theoretically) private chat conversation by using a feature that lets people preview their profile through the eyes of their friends. Theoretically, the feature is supposed to allow users to see if they are using the appropriate privacy settings, but instead it appears to have inserted some sort of Trojan horse that allows access to very personal information that users would never want to share, good times……….

- Emu on the loose! Emu on the loose! Or as I like to call it, just good Tuesday morning fun in Rock Hill, S.C. It was quite a sight in downtown Rock Hill as a free-running emu raced down Chestnut Street, East Main Street and other streets in the East Town neighborhood, just east of downtown Rock Hill. The bird managed to elude dozens of pursuers, including several police officers who joined in the chase. Sadly, the emu was finally caught by 70-year-old Bobby Mangrum, who snagged the bird with a fishing net. Mangrum had an advantage because he owns two emus and also keeps llamas and goats at his home. Once the captured emu was taken into custody, police loaded it onto a horse trailer and took it to Mangrum’s home. No one knows who owns the renegade emu, but whoever it is should be freaking proud that their bird put up such a great fight and made so many pursuers look ridiculous before being caught. York County Animal Control officer Roger Bradley, said the bird was first spotted near Interstate 77 but clearly this is not a highway type of emu and this bird prefers calmer, more rural roads for its daily runs. Here’s hoping you run free again and soon, brave Rock Hill emu………