Fresh Loaf

An entire span of the I-35 bridge crossing the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed about 90 minutes ago.

There are still people walking around the parts of the collapsed bridge not submerged in the river.

I turned on CNN Headline News to see what’s happening and there’s Nancy Grace, nostrils-a-flarin’, discussing how the people on the bridge and their families are going to be able to sue.

Can we get them off the rubble first, Nancy?

The most trusted name in news.

Puke.

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According to a story on CNNMoney.com, Atlanta’s 30310 ZIP code is second only to one in Cleveland as the single ZIP code with the most foreclosures over the past three months.

Cleveland’s 44105 ZIP code had 783 foreclosures, followed by Atlanta’s 30310 (southwest Atlanta) with 709. According to the story:

Many Sun-Belt buyers bought their high-priced houses using 2/28 adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) which featured very low initial, or “teaser,” rates that reset much higher after the first two years of fixed payments.

But ARMs are best used … as credit-repair products. They’re set up for borrowers to show they can keep up mortgage payments and then refinance out into affordable fixed-rate loans after two years.

Many buyers used ARMs to get into a house with little regard for whether they could afford the payments, betting that rising prices could build enough home equity they could tap for cash.

When prices stabilized or fell, that safety valve disappeared. Owners couldn’t pay monthly bills, and they had no equity to draw on.

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I interviewed Bruce Willis when he was in town for the Live Free or Die Hard press tour. He made an amusing comment about his on-camera interview for CNN that I couldn’t fit in the finished story, so I’ll present it here in the spirit of the “DVD Extra”:

I was just over at CNN? And you would think, CNN, it’s a big deal and everything – it’s CNN. And I’m looking down to where the monitor is, and first of all, there’s fingerprints all over it. Plus, they’ve got a $1.99 piece of black fabric on it that’s easily been on there since the first Gulf War. And I’m thinking, “This is CNN?”

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CNN’s superstar anchor Anderson Cooper arrives in Atlanta on Friday to sign copies of his memoir, Dispatches From The Edge at the CNN Center bookstore from noon till 2 p.m.

There’s a chance he might answer questions about his post-Katrina coverage or his famous mom. But good luck getting Cooper to comment on the seemingly increasing efforts to pry him from the closet.
Just this month, Out magazine pictures a clever cover shot of models holding up masks of the faces of Jodie Foster and Cooper with the headline “Glass closet: Why the stars won’t come out and play.” Still, he ranks No. 2 on their “50 Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America” list.

Also recently, NBC sitcom “30 Rock” had a Cooper in-joke as part of a gay-themed subplot and in the February Out, openly gay actor Rupert Everett discussed the perils of celebrities coming out, using Cooper as a theoretical example.

So give it a shot. What’s the worst that could happen? That you get an autograph and a black eye.

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