Barack Obama has an eye for talent—and it’s pointed at Rhode Island.

This weekend, Obama appointed Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, which describes its mission as connecting people through various arts and cultural tourism.  Lahiri joins five other PCAH committee appointees, including visual artist Chuck Close, BET co-founder Sheila Johnson, and Ken Solomon, CEO of the Tennis Channel.

Lahiri, whose novels and short story collections include The Namesake, Interpreter of Maladies and Unaccustomed Earth, moved to Rhode Island as a toddler and graduated from South Kingston High.  (Her father Amar has been a librarian at URI since 1970, earning a master’s there in 1973, and his wife Tapati is currently a URI degree candidate.)  Lahiri’s memories of Rhode Island include observing some panic over an impending hurricane.  (What, no mention of bread and milk?)

Although she didn’t attend college in Rhode Island, Jhumpa has spoken at local commencements, given readings at Brown and URI, and received an honorary URI degree.  She also taught creative writing courses at RISD and Brown.

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Now this is what I call sordid. Rhode Islanders are learning more about the sudden departure of Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Williams last December. Today’s Providence Journal reports on testimony stemming from the divorce proceedings of his former driver, deputy sheriff Pamela DosReis. Seems Williams took an inordinate interest the DosReis family, in particular their 6-year-old daughter. Mr. DosReis testified in Family Court about how Williams once traveled with the family to Disney World, attended a father-daughter dance along with Mr. DosReis, and once watched the child in the bathtub,

He said that Williams sat on the toilet with a glass of wine while the child bathed.

In the long shameful history of Rhode Island Chief Justices (already discussed here) this man is breaking totally new ground. Although he retired last December he has still been seated on the court, filling the vacancy made by his successor. I suggest that his complicated personal life will be a time-consuming distraction and render him unable to properly attend to the business of the court. Petitioners have serious matters before the court and shouldn’t have to deal with, or even look at, this creep. (Now excuse me, I need to take a shower.)

UPDATE 8/15: All charges dropped. “‘She’s not a criminal,’ McEnaney said. ‘She’s a walking cartoon character, when she’s in character.’”

Here’s the now-embeddable video, which has amassed its own little YouTube following and you should really watch if you somehow haven’t seen it:

UPDATE 4/6: Holy crap this is amazing, and you really should actually watch it.

ORIGINAL POST, 4/3: While normally I hate the Channel 10 news, Jim Taricani’s interview with alleged cyberstalker Ann Bruno is worth watching (albeit unembeddable.) Though it only makes me wonder how much livelier this interview would have been if it were conducted by Channel 6’s crazy Paul Mueller.*

(*Seriously, watch this and try not to laugh at the timing when he says “YOUR HOME!”)

[Additional Note: Look, we are all busy people — and friends are constantly telling us "You have to see this one!" — but I finally made time to check this out and it is right off the goofy meter. You do have to see this one! Thank you Matthew. Beth Comery]

After 30 years in the clink, historical footnote Squeaky Fromme has been released from prison today. Is she dying to finally Tweet? Is she as excited for Mad Men Season 3 as I am?! Taste that freedom, Squeaky, a brave new world awaits you!

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Squeaky gained fame in the 70s for a number of oh-no-she-di’in’ts, most notably for her membership in the Manson family and for her failed assassination attempt of then President Ford - both of which probably seem like poor life choices in hindsight.

I know and love Squeaky from Sondheim’s amazing musical Assassins (yes, I’m that gay), where the character Squeaky Fromme sings a duet with the character John Hinckley (of Jodie Foster/Ronald Regan fame).

Since my greatest joy in life is finding sad gays and needy girls doing bad covers of showtunes on YouTube (mostly because I’m cold and dead inside), it took me no time at all to find a YouTube clip of a sad gay singing not one but both parts of “Unworthy of Your Love”. Celebrate Squeaky’s freedom, Fridays, and sad gays below! (sass/tragedy starts at the 4:10 mark)

Death has been no friend to the glitterati this summer. In truth, Summer 09 is playing out like a real-life celebrity slasher flick, and this weekend was no exception. Frank McCourt and Walter Cronkite are the latest victims cut down in the prime of life, and Hollywood has been left wondering: who’s next?

While we at the Daily Dose do not currently have the technology to accurately predict the identities of any future casualties, we can remind A-Listers and D-Listers alike of The Rules, a practical how-to guide for surviving the most gruesome of horror films:

1. Never have sex. This is important! If David Carradine had simply gone on a tour of some Buddhist temple instead of having Thai trannies tie his junk up with shoelaces* he’d probably still be alive today.
2. Never drink or do drugs. This is your brain. This is your brain on Jesus Juice and Demerol. Got any questions?
3. Never, under any circumstances, say “I’ll be Right Back.” I have absolutely no way of proving this, but I think it’s pretty obvious that Billy Mays probably spoke these exact words right before he left us for that big OxiClean infomercial in the sky.

With roughly six more weeks left for brazen rule breaking, who do you predict will throw caution to the wind and fall victim to Summer of Celebrity Death 09? Our comment lines are open and waiting to hear what you have to say.

*Allegedly, and according to a fellow reveler at the PKL shindig at Nick-A-Nees last night.

OMG. If you are not following the post-election events in Iran, start. If you are not following the way that Iranians are using Twitter to respond to the recent election, start doing it right now.

I’ve always had my questions about the utility of web-based media (because I think it sometimes gives idiots the tools to spread opinion as fact. Like, um, any local blog.) But young Iranians are using more democratized internet tools to build a more democratized state. This thing in Iran is something to witness. And it is best witnessed on Twitter.

The mini-blogging site has become so critical to events in Iran, the company postponed a scheduled maintenance this evening to tomorrow afternoon (at around 1:30am Tehran time.)

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New Hampshire just approved gay marriage, which means that same-sex couples in the Granit State can now live free and/or die without having to concern themselves with crap like hospital visitation rights and separate state income tax returns.

That means that we are now the only state in New England where same-sex couples can’t get hitched.  And, probably, it’s going to stay that way for a while, despite the abundance of openly gay people here.  Admittedly, I don’t think gay marriage is the most important issue in the world, but I also think it’s kind of a slap in the face that Rhode Island–the only state in New England founded on ideals of religious freedom–would be the last one to carry on without equal rights for its (many, many) gays and lesbians.

I like our state’s hustle on this swine flu.  I hadn’t even heard of it ’til days after RI’s Swine Flu Task Force contacted every doc in the state with guidance on evaluating it in patients.

About two years ago, I was the lucky gal sitting between beefy, flat-topped men in decorated uniforms at the National Guard, discussing lovely things like how we (well, not me personally, at least unless I read the contingency plan wrong) would collect, transport and store the corpses of deceased friends and neighbors.  Good times, right?  These folks imagined a scenario where a pandemic flu would find its way to America, eventually hitting our lil’ state.  At the time I was like, “Dude, don’t these doomsayers have lives?”  Now I’m like, “Dude.” (That’s it. I’m not very verbal today.  Must be the heat.)

So know that these folks have us covered, even as the media freaks out about the 40 cases so far in the U.S. (except our very own ProJo, which is only reporting 20 on their blog. I like media outlets that avoid creating undue panic).

But if you MUST track this, there are local, national and international sites with all the swine flu updates you can handle, plus a Google map that tracks reported cases.  I love that RI’s health department is tweeting about it, too.  This ain’t your grandpa’s swine flu.

Update: The Youtube post is down, but it’s still online here.  Thank heavens.

Original: I stopped going to Taco Bell when I was in sixth grade because I saw somebody working there sneeze in a really unhygienic way, and when my mom complained we were just given coupons for our next visit. But apparently I should have kept going, because it seems Taco Bell is actually a muy caliente den of sin where people just can’t keep it in their pants.

A five-year old South Bend, Indiana girl recently went to pee and found not two, not three, but four people thinking outside the bun together in the ladies room. Her parents were understandably upset, and now they have called the corporate office (fine), the police (I guess?), and the local news (come on now). WNDU picked up the story and produced four of the most dramatic moments of television since they cancelled Melrose Place.

My ten favorite things about this story, after the jump:

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During tonight’s episode of Life On Mars–which is the first show I’ve decided to follow since Buffy got cancelled like nine thousand years ago–Channel 6* ran a bunch of news teasers about sexting, which I just learned is what it’s called when you’re in middle school and you text your friends naked pictures of girls you know.  It’s like ’sex’+'texting’-'tex’. Get it?  (Also, apparently it’s old news.)

I won’t go into why this is news because really, why.  But on a semi-related note, in Scotland right now Christian activists want lawmakers to make it illegal for teenagers to perform oral sex on one another.  Apparently that’s a big issue there and, you know, a conversation best held in a courtroom.  [via Joe.My.God]

[*And I kept it on because I'm lazy, and because John DeLuca is my favorite newscaster.  That guy just cracks me up.]

There’s a really great (and very very long) article at filmmaker Errol Morris’s New York Times blog about President Bush as he’s been portrayed through news photographs.  He interviews three photographers, from the Associated Press, Reuters, and the Agence French-Presse, and asks them to comment on some of the more remarkable images of the past eight years, including Bush and Putin waving from a car window, Bush and Obama and a mystery shadow, and the whole Bush camp doing a photo op in the middle of Texas.  Some of their remarks are really enlightening, and the photos are definitely worth looking at.

[Best song ever via Mission of Burma at the Paradise in 1980.]

You may be in luck.  Madoff scandal victim Brandeis University is closing down its Rose Art Museum late this summer and selling thousands of works by artists like Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Nam June Paik, James Rosenquist, and Roy Lichtenstein.  In addition to its collections, the Rose hosts public programs, live jazz on the second Sunday each month, and random lunchtime string quartet performances.  Today’s Boston Globe reports the museum’s closure and art sale, which understandably angers donors and their families, will create funds to reinvest elsewhere at the university.

“This is not a happy day in the history of Brandeis,” [Brandeis President Jehuda] Reinharz said last night. “The Rose is a jewel. But for the most part it’s a hidden jewel. It does not have great foot traffic, and most of the great works we have, we are just not able to exhibit. We felt that, at this point given the recession and the financial crisis, we had no choice.”

I don’t know about you, but I find this depressing as heck.  Rhode Island universities, please don’t follow suit.

There was a stupid prank resulting in a minor explosion at the Thayer Street Starbucks last night. It was reported on CNN and NPR but information is harder to come by locally. Some details are available at the Channel 10 News website.

Emergency crews in Providence evacuated the Thayer Street Starbucks on the East Side of the city after a small explosion.

Providence Police Maj. Thomas Oates said investigators believe someone set off a homemade incendiary device in a plastic soda bottle as a prank on Thursday night.

About 20 to 30 customers were inside the Thayer Street shop when the explosion happened just before 11 p.m. No one was reported injured and Oates said the only damage was minor charring on the floor.

Complete story at turnto10.com.

I’m sure at some point on your I-95 travels you’ve encountered a large automobile with truck nuts — the tackiest must-have auto accessory since the dream catcher. Truck nuts serve the dual purpose of allowing the owner to feel comfortable about their own meager serving of god-given gonads while simultaneously alerting other travelers that they’re driving behind somebody with all the intelligence, class, and wit of a Larry the Cable Guy film.

I’m reminded of truck nuts — and straight men’s obsession with a set of low-hangers — with the breaking news that, despite a month’s worth Frankenstein-esque media lynching, fucktard Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has named former attorney general Roland Burris to fill Obama’s vacant senate seat.

If you were a disgraced governor with a questionable coiffure would you:
a.) bow out gracefully, dedicating the rest of your life to hair accessories and quiet contemplation, or
b.) appoint a black, senior politician to the seat you allegedly attempted to sell, create a predictably uproarious race-centric political backlash, and prove once and for all that men with truly big balls don’t need silly car accessories.

Governor Blagojevich has called a news conference for 3:00 today, presumably to announce that former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris will fill Obama’s empty Senate seat.  Senate Democrats are refusing to recognize anyone the governor appoints until Blagojevich loses the toupee or stops being corrupt or gets impeached or something.  If he does go to jail, maybe Chicago’s Channel 6 equivalent can hire him to offer political opinions when he’s out?

My fellow fallen Cat’lics, here’s yet another reason to avoid midnight mass this year: Pope Benedict has declared that stamping out homosexuality is as important a task as saving the rainforests. “The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less,” quoth Big Papa B. “[The Church] should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed.” The pontiff then urged for the eradication of heterosexual dogging, couple swapping, and hard-bondage orgies without safety words - a fight that he said was just as paramount as the migration towards wind, solar, and hydro energy as a means to reduce greenhouse emissions.

To be honest, nobody has ever compared me to mass deforestation before; and while I’m not sure how my buggery displaces indigenous people or accelerates the extinction of the red-eyed tree frog, I can’t help but take the Pope’s wisdom as a wonderful Christmas compliment.