Fresh Loaf

CL has followed the goings-on of Mike Norman, bar owner and T-shirt designer extraordinaire, with great interest in recent weeks. We were lucky enough to get a video interview with the man who became a person of national interest by selling T-shirts depicting Sen. Barack Obama as a Curious George look-alike.

Mike Norman was also interviewed by CNN but they failed to elicit the stunning insight into the cartoon monkey-lover’s mind that CL managed.

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At one point, Ashley Harkleroad — who hails from Rossville in North Georgia — was hyped as the next Anna Kournikova in women’s tennis, except she was supposed to have game. She was the singles runner-up in the juniors division at the 2002 Roland Garros (the French Open) and won the junior doubles at Roland Garros that year.

But she has faltered as a pro, reaching a high of 39 in the world in 2003. Currently, she’s ranked 61.

Now, Harkleroad is going to go Kournikova one better: After taking a 6-2 6-1 drubbing at the hands of Serena Williams at the French Open on Sunday, Harkleroad announced she has posed nude for Playboy and will be featured in the August issue.

It seems unbecoming and desperate for a professional tennis player to make her statement by posing for Playboy instead of on the courts. It also seems symptomatic of a tennis career that never reached its potential.

Harkleroad told reporters in Paris that she’s proud of her body. “I’ll be the first tennis player ever,” she said. “That’s kind of cool.”

It’s kind of sad, actually.

To read Serena Williams’ bemused reaction, click here.

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FEE FOR ALL: Atlanta City Councilman Jim Maddox proposes taxing $1 for tickets to pro sporting events and major concerts in the city to help soften the looming $140 million budget shortfall.

14TH STREET BRIDGE: Dead to us.

GET OUT OF MY CAR: Between March 2007 and March 2008, American driving dropped at the steepest rate since record keeping began in 1942.

ABATED BREATH: Beginning next year, asthma sufferers will have to switch to the more expensive CFC-free inhalers for environmental reasons, good for ozone but a blow to Atlantans who already live in an asthma-unfriendly city.

YOU GOT CONSERVED: As utilities start raising rates to make up for reduced usage, the dark side of conservation is rearing its head across the Southeast.

ONE FLU OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST: Study released Monday says strains of bird flu are getting closer to conditions that could lead to a human pandemic.

GETTING BROWSY: The “browser wars” of the mid-’90s are heating back up, as Mozilla readies Firefox 3.0 for release in June and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 is due later this year.

FRIGHTENING IN A BOTTLE: Orlando man sells bottles that he claims have ghosts in them.

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Last weekend’s vandalism of an Obama mural in Little Five Points wasn’t the first time someone sprayed the Nazi symbol on a sign related to Barack Obama.

During last month’s campaigning for the presidential primary in Pennsylvania, an elderly couple awoke to find a red swastika spray-painted on their Obama yard sign.

In case you’re keeping score on where the people who draw swastikas are directing their attention: According to my best culling of headlines over the last year, that’s two times Obama’s been defaced with swastikas, zero for McCain, zero for Clinton.

One interesting point about the people in this story is their ethnic backgrounds. Whatever you think of him as a candidate, Obama does seem to be drawing support from the growing portion of Americans whose families don’t fit neatly into “white,” “black” or “Christian” categories.

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Enough already! Senators McCain and Obama are playing coy this Memorial Day weekend about their vice presidential selection process.

I’m not going to play that game; I’m going to level with the American people: Yes, I’ve been entertaining political leaders this weekend with the express purpose of vetting them as possible running mates.

We’re checking into geographical, ethnic and regional balance, as well as chemistry, and so far I have two frontrunners. One is an aggressive, white male with a strong instinct to go on the attack, no matter what the situation. The other would be a more revolutionary choice: She comes from a mixed background and likes to chew on leather. Both are southerners with natural charisma.

Please let me know if you’d like to be considered as well.

Below is a photograph of the two. The one on the left is Coconut. The one on the right is Peanut. Please let me know your preference or if you have a pet who’d like to be considered as well.

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Someone spray-painted a swastika and X’s last night over this graffiti portrait of Barack Obama in Little Five Points.

Obama with swastika

Camron Wiltshire and two other artists had been working last week on the piece at the corner of Colquitt and Euclid avenues. Sir2 painted another Obama portrait, and Michi had scripted out the old Sam Cooke lyric: “A long time coming but a change gonna come.”

Wiltshire, who happens to be a former CL Lust List winner, came by today to put the finishing touches on his portrait — and discovered the swastika. Sir2’s portrait also was defaced with a swastika.

“Nothing stops love,” Wiltshire said. “The person who did it is forgiven. And if he’d like to come talk to me, I am open to it. And I hope as a collective humanity can evolve and learn to love each other.”

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Percentage range of Georgia sixth and seventh graders who failed the state social studies exam: 70-80

Approximate percentage of Georgia eighth-graders who failed the state math exam: 40

Percentage of Georgia eighth graders who failed math exam last year: 19

Percentage of eighth graders required to pass state math exam before advancing to high school: 100

Georgia’s high school graduation rate in 2007: 72.3

Percentage of students who took it who passed Georgia’s high school graduation test in 2007: 79

Average SAT score in Georgia in 2007: 1,472

States with higher average SAT score than Georgia in 2007: 45

Sources: AJC, Georgia Department of Education.

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Sure, Creative Loafing’s got desks of award-winning designers, but we also know that Atlanta’s got talent.

So, we’re asking Georgia students to submit their cover designs for CL’s 2008 College Guide: The Student Body Handbook.

We’re taking the phrase “student body” literally and figuratively this year, and providing a guide for students’ heads (academics), hearts (activism), stomachs (food and drink), arms and legs (partying), and feet (moving about Atlanta and on from college).

The first-place winner receives $200 cash and prizes.

Start sketching; the deadline is midnight, Tues., July 1.

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Nearly one hour after a heavy thundershower briefly caused CL’s roof to leak, almost frying a computer, I received this e-mail alert from The Weather Channel:

SIGNIFICANT WEATHER ALERT FOR EXCESSIVE LIGHTNING AND HEAVY RAIN IN DEKALB…COBB…GWINNETT AND FULTON COUNTIES UNTIL 5:00 PM EDT…

Gee, thanks.

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STATE CEREMONY FOR FALLEN SOLDIERS: 24 fellow members of Spc. Tracy Smith’s National Guard brigade have died in Iraq. (Photo by Joeff Davis)

On a day when presumptive presidential nominees McCain and Obama sparred over veteran’s benefits, Gov. Sonny Perdue hosted a somber pre-Memorial Day service at Mount Paran Church of God to honor the 137 Georgians who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001.

So many family members of fallen Georgia troops were in attendance that, when they were asked to stand, half the church stood up. Keynote speaker Retired Army Lt. Gen Russel Honoré said the best way to honor soldiers, sailors and Marines is expanding veterans’ benefits.

Not long after the ceremony, a veto-proof Senate majority (including Obama and Sen. Saxby Chambliss, but not including McCain) defied President Bush by voting to greatly expand benefits for veterans of the nation’s current wars.

(Additional reporting by Joeff Davis)

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VIRAL MARKETING: A congressional investigation concludes the Bush administration used a flawed study when it said it would be fine to relocate research on the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease from an isolated island lab to mainland sites near livestock, such as Athens. Also, National Grange argues moving the lab near livestock would make it an inviting target for terrorists.

JOHN THOMPSON: New Clayton superintendent says he’ll meet the SACS mandates a month and a half early, but many parents are ready to move to more accredited pastures.

ATLANTA DREAM: Home opener is tonight.

STORMS: 2008 is on track to be a record year for insured storm losses, according to Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine.

VIVP: Rumors are Bill’s reset his sights on 2016 for Hillary via the VP, but no one admits to anything.

MARS LANDING: Scientists will spend their Memorial Day weekend fretting in the Jet Propulsion Lab over the Phoenix Mars probe, which faces the Mars-probe legacy of a 55 percent failure rate.

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MACK MESSIAH AT DRUNKEN UNICORN LAST WEDNESDAY: Band leader Kenny Crucial’s shadow-puppet-solo brought down the house. (Photo by Perry Julien)

More photos from the show can be found on our music blog Crib Notes.

Mara Shalhoup’s 2007 cover story about Kenny is also a great read.

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If Robb Pitts has his way, another architecturally noteworthy Atlanta library may soon be endangered. In March, the Fulton County Commission, of which Pitts is a member, voted to place a $150 million bond referendum on the fall ballot, with the proceeds to go toward library system construction and repairs.

That package would include about $40 million to overhaul the central library downtown, but Pitts says he plans to lobby the Atlanta-Fulton Library Board this week to instead consider using those funds on a new building.

“Rather than spend $40 million to renovate an old building, we should build a world-class, signature facility that’s more user-friendly,” ideally across from Centennial Olympic Park, he says.

Opened in 1977, the central library is a largely window-less concrete edifice that’s been compared to a giant cinder block. It also happens to have been designed by Marcel Breuer, a former Bauhaus instructor who ranks among the 20th century’s most influential practitioners of architectural modernism. The library is similar in style to Breuer’s earlier design for New York’s Whitney Museum.

Pitts, who advocates selling the old building, is aware he may be courting a public uproar similar to that which followed the proposed sale of the Buckhead branch library, an eccentric, scale-covered building designed by locals Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam. But he’s willing to give it a shot – in fact, he even wants to consider a new proposal by Streets of Buckhead developer Ben Carter to reconstruct the Buckhead library on another site.

“I don’t see how we can say no to that offer,” says Pitts.

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Less than three hours before he was scheduled to die, Georgia death row inmate Samuel David Crowe was granted clemency by the state Board of Pardons and Paroles.

The board released a brief statement:

After careful and exhaustive consideration of the requests, the Board voted to grant clemency. The Board voted to commute the sentence to life without parole.

Since 1995, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles has considered 24 death sentenced inmates, and this is the third sentenced inmate to be commuted.

Crowe pleaded guilty to the 1998 murder of his former coworker, whom he killed during an armed robbery in Douglasville. He was sentenced to death a year after the killing.

The board’s decision to commute Crowe’s sentence could bode well for another death row inmate, Troy Anthony Davis.

Last July, the board granted Davis a stay of execution and issued an order stating, “The members of the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles will not allow an execution to proceed in this State unless and until its members are convinced that there is no doubt as to the guilt of the accused.”

Prior to issuing the order, the board heard from five witnesses whom Davis’s attorney believed could help prove Davis didn’t commit the murder for which he was sentenced in 1991.

The board is expected to hear from more witnesses later this year, after another execution date for Davis is set.

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Nargis/Before and after

I compare Nargis to Hurricane Katrina in the story, sticking to the geographic and meteorological similarities.

Yesterday New Orleans Times-Picayune columnist Lolis Eric Elie noted the similarity between the Burmese junta’s reaction to Nargis and the Bush Administration’s reaction to Katrina:

A snippet:

Of course our federal government neither offered nor accepted much relief for victims of the federal levee failures.

As the journal “Foreign Policy” put it, “When France and dozens of other countries pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and supplies to the relief effort, their donations should have helped ease the crisis. Instead, one year after Katrina battered the Gulf Coast, none of the money given to the federal government has made its way to evacuees.”