LOS ANGELES — Engelbert Humperdink has one. Clint Eastwood does not. John, George and Ringo – yes. Paul McCartney? Not yet. And George Clooney would be in the club if only someone could convince him to show up for the ceremony. When it comes to receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the sidewalk tourist attraction that encompasses 15 blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of intersecting Vine Street, it’s not so much who you know, but whether you’re willing to play by the rules. For starters, someone in the celebrity’s camp must first fill out an application form that includes the star’s signed promise that they will attend the ceremony. No pledge? No ceremony. Which is why Eastwood, Julia Roberts and Clooney aren’t among the 2,450 honorees lining Hollywood’s sidewalks. A five-member committee meets annually in June to consider some 250 to 300 applicants from five categories of the entertainment industry – film, television, music, broadcast radio and theater, a category added in 1984. As you might imagine, some of the candidates possess light resumes. Others wouldn’t be able to show up for obvious reasons. “We’ve had applications from Santa Claus and the duck that represents an insurance company on commercials,” says Walk of Fame producer Ana Martinez, who attends the voting meeting and decides where the stars are eventually placed on the street. “Somebody insisted Shakespeare should have a star,” Martinez adds. Typically, the Walk’s committee annually selects 20 to 24 new honorees, who must then pay a $30,000 sponsorship fee. This covers the cost of constructing the three-foot-wide stars as well as the cost of the ceremony. A portion of this money also goes to the Walk’s trust fund for continued maintenance. Of course, the honorees themselves rarely foot the bill. Recipients have five years to schedule their ceremony. Most celebrities time the event to coincide with a promotional opportunity. “Stars like to make it a big deal,” Hollywood Chamber of Commerce president Leron Gubler says. “That’s the way they are. They get a little more bang for their buck out of it when they time it right.” Thus, September’s star recipients Neil Patrick Harris and Jon Cryer scheduled their ceremonies to coincide with the fall premieres of their long-running television series, “How I Met Your Mother” and “Two and a Half Men,” respectively. The shows’ production companies each paid the $30,000 fee. Rock star Melissa Etheridge, a recent honoree, saw her star unveiled in front of the Hard Rock Café, which, not coincidentally, paid her bill. Etheridge used the ceremony both to thank her fans and launch Hard Rock’s Pinktober breast cancer awareness campaign. Etheridge, 50, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004 and has been a spokesperson for the event for the past six years. “It’s forever,” Etheridge says of her star, following a morning ceremony attended by an estimated 500 people, including many fans who traveled on their own dime from across the country to be at the event. “We’ve been playing this fame game for 100 years here in this city of dreams,” Etheridge adds, noting she came to the Walk of Fame when she visited Los Angeles as a teenager. At 51, the Walk of Fame is roughly half of Hollywood’s age, and many of its stars are in need of a little cosmetic surgery. Tree roots along Vine Street have caused the stars’ black and pink terrazzo concrete to crumble. Heat and foot traffic are factors, too, contributing to the buckling of the stars’ brass name lettering, borders and emblems. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce initiated a restoration project in 2008, grading each of the walk’s stars. Nearly 800 were targeted to be repaired or replaced. Raising the $4.2 million needed to complete the project hasn’t been easy. Corporate sponsors have donated about half the total, to go along with money from private donors and a portion of the proceeds from the star ceremonies. Though still short of the goal, Gruber says he hopes work can begin next year. “We don’t have the money to do the whole walk,” Gruber says. “We’ll start with the worst sections and go from there.” Redevelopment, including the Hollywood and Highland complex and its Kodak Theatre, the permanent home of the Academy Awards, have bolstered the fortunes of the walk’s west end in the past decade. The Walk of Fame, along with the famous movie star footprints at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, remain popular attractions for tourists visiting Los Angeles. “They’re iconic places that still resonate with people, though what’s in the imagination probably doesn’t align with the reality,” says USC professor Leo Braudy, whose book “The Hollywood Sign” covers another area landmark. “It’s a way for people to connect with their favorite celebrities,” Braudy continues, “though if you really want to meet one, you’d have a lot more luck going to the nearest supermarket.” ? Read more from the original source: Why Doesn’t George Clooney Have A Star On The Walk Of Fame?
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Paul Schwennesen: Eating from the Same Dish: Liberals and Conservatives Should Both Enjoy "Local" Food
I make my living at farmers’ markets and know my core clientele well. It generally doesn’t sport “Gun Control is Hitting Your Target” t-shirts, so it struck me when one showed up at our stand. In answer to my jests, the wearer asked a telling question: “What could be more conservative than eating what my grandparents ate, eating it in season, and knowing my farmer neighbors?” I had to admit he was on to something. The local foods movement, springing from a generally affluent, generally left-leaning and thoroughly disenchanted consumer base, has been so identified with liberal motifs that the movement is usually derided by the right as the freak love-child of hippies and yuppies. To be sure, some of the poetic allegiance to all things organic and a frantic fear of all things Monsanto worries those who pride themselves on reasoned discourse. Yet for those of us who see folly in centralized power, the local foods movement has something to tell us. In doing so it is reinventing how many of us eat — and how an increasing number of us produce — food. Those on the right generally distrust centralization of political power and its litany of transgressions against the individual. Those on the left, meanwhile, distrust centralization of market power, which also has an offensive record of abuses against the individual. Centralization in agribusiness, that hazy realm from which our food spontaneously appears, poses its own peculiar set of dangers to the individual because it really represents the accumulation of both political and market power. Now that fewer than two percent of the population is directly engaged in food production (down from twenty-five percent at the beginning of FDR’s failed drive to “save the farmer”), the fact that agriculture has been massively consolidated is inescapable. While this is not entirely a bad thing (obesity now trumps hunger in our collective top-ten list of concerns), it does present a troubling aspect. When the vast majority of meat processing (87%) is done by just four companies, the system is top-heavy and fragile. Coupled with the crony-capitalism of powerful lobbies, centralized agriculture makes youthful entry into “the field” difficult and financially reckless. The local foods movement offers an alternative to the agricultural-industrial complex, presenting producers with healthier profit potentials and reviving a more diffuse and independent agrarian production base. In an address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society in 1859, Abraham Lincoln stated that, “no other human occupation opens so wide a field for the profitable and agreeable combination of labor with cultivated thought, as agriculture.” The advent of highly mechanized industrial production systems has largely erased the intellectual and emotional bond that Lincoln (and Jefferson before him) relied upon to maintain virtuous citizen-farmers. Today, a newfound appreciation for old patterns has sprung up. Many erstwhile leftists have discovered that the “Tea Party” themes of liberty and individual responsibility resonate strongly if rooted in a land ethic and in local produce. Right-leaners, for their part, find a novel way to consume food, one which looks very much like their forebears (which is, after all, the essence of “conservatism”). For both, centralization in markets and among corporations is just as pressing a concern as centralization of the State. For both, feeding their dollars into local agriculture is a palatable way to participate in a free-market. Ironically enough, while many liberals express skepticism about laissez-faire economies, they are the first to indignantly resist intrusion by bureaucrats into local farmers’ markets, raw-milk cooperatives, and community supported agriculture programs. And while many conservatives balk at “boutique” markets, they find that a connection to real producers gives them a glow not found at Costco or Walmart. It has always struck me as exemplifying the beauty of a free market that I sweat and toil to serve a clientele that in general I’m ideologically adverse. I serve customers who, if their accoutrement is to be taken seriously (Obama bags, Che t-shirts, “profit is poison” bumper stickers and the like) are decidedly anti-capitalist. And yet during the course of our clearly capitalistic transactions, we both find pleasure in the process and discover a newfound respect for each other. The revival of local food and local markets is an interesting phenomenon. While it still marches under the banner of the left, it blurs the political distinctions enough that the right ought to feel comfortable joining in. They say that politics makes for poor digestion; who knew that what we digest makes for good politics? Paul Schwennesen is a southern Arizona rancher. He can be reached at AgrarianLiberty.com . Excerpt from: Paul Schwennesen: Eating from the Same Dish: Liberals and Conservatives Should Both Enjoy “Local” Food
