| In Fairlee, the Whole Family Goes to Summer Camp
Every year at summer camp in Fairlee, Joanna Bassett makes at least one basket. On a crystalline morning earlier this week in the Aloha Camp's craft barn, Bassett was absorbed in the methodical task of weaving canes. I would never make baskets at home because I would have to go out and get all the stuff, Bassett said. Although it was early in her week at camp, Bassett was nearly done with her basket, giving her plenty of time to help Marcie Kaplan and Audrey Rubin, and Kaplan's daughter, Chloe, and Rubin's daughter, Sophia, both 9, with their own attempts. The relaxed scene was what drew all three women, and their children, to Aloha Camp, a camp for girls age 12 to 17 which for one week at the end of the summer opens up to families. Thanks to steady demand for family-camp programs over the past decade, Fairlee's Aloha Foundation is cleaning up a 112-acre camp it purchased on Lake Fairlee in Thetford to serve almost entirely as a family camp.
Chefs vie for 'Hell'ish haute cuisine spot
The devil's in the details, or for reality TV show hopefuls in Chicago, the chef's hat as they vie for a spot cooking in Gordon Ramsay's "Hell's Kitchen."
Ramsay, a three-star restaurateur with eateries scattered across the globe, berates, belittles and bedevils the chef-contestants throughout the series until the final one standing wins a six-figure salary and a job running his or her own upscale restaurant.
More than 350 cooks were at the Illinois Institute of Culinary Arts Wednesday, trying to win a spot on Ramsay's televised boot camp. Several said the Scot's in-your-face behavior and profane language isn't unusual in the restaurant world, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
"You see that in every kitchen,'' Scott Van Dyke, 42, who cooks at a Grand Rapids, Mich., restaurant, told the Sun-Times.
Kids reality TV series filming draws complaint from participant's mom, kudos from others
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - A CBS reality series in which youngsters run their own town has prompted complaints from one of the children's parents, and may have skirted New Mexico's child-protection laws. "Kid Nation," slated to premiere Sept. 19, was filmed over 40 days during April and May in a movie-set town in the high desert just south of Santa Fe. While parents and children made available by CBS praised the production as safe, well-supervised and a learning experience, one mother has told authorities the conditions warrant an abuse investigation. Janis Miles of Fayetteville, Ga., said in a letter that her 12-year-old daughter, Divad Miles, was spattered on her face with grease while cooking potatoes on a wood stove, and that four other children required medical attention after they accidentally drank bleach.
Summer movie wrap-up
Like the spider-sequel that spun to the top of the box office, the just-wrapped summer movie season boasted stars, effects -- but shockingly few surprises. As expected, Spider-Man 3, Shrek The Third and Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End bowed to staggering box office returns -- the Sam Raimi-directed comic-book threequel webbed up a record-shattering $150 million US in its opening weekend. And, as predicted, the biggest non-sequel proved to be Michael Bay's Transformers. Also not a surprise? That the log-jam of blockbusters cannibalized each other to a degree. Or that the studios which didn't overspend outrageously ($175 million on Evan Almighty?!) emerged the season's savviest winners. In fact, the best-received films turned out to be the scant few originals among the legions of franchises -- whether it was Ratatouille, about a rat who wants to be a chef; Hairspray, about a chubby girl who just wants to dance; or Knocked Up and Superbad, both geek-centric raunch-coms about horndogs who just want to get laid.
Who's on top in the battle of the sexes?
Women might feel hard done by, but men have plenty to grumble about, too. At high school Allan Henry finally found something he was good at. But when he started strutting the stage and spouting Shakespeare at macho Flaxmere College in Hawke's Bay, the burly first-fifteeners lost no time in labelling the self-described weedy, straggly-haired Maori boy a sissy. "If you were a guy and you were into drama, you were gay. If you were a girl and you were into it, you were an actress." He survived the taunting relatively unscathed and undaunted and now 25 and a graduate of Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School has carved a niche for himself as a stuntman and stage fight choreographer. Blonde, blue-eyed girlfriend Alix Bushnell, 24, is still studying at Toi Whakaari, but has appeared in several productions with Henry and will scrap with him in coming football riot production FootBallistic, which plays at Bats Theatre at the September Dance Your Socks Off Festival.
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