Month: June 2017

A prospect with a 94 mph fastball gets a lot of attention, no matter where he is pitching — even when that prospect is a diminutive 16-year-old from a country with little baseball tradition.

Eric Pardinho’s blazing fastball has brought scouts to this city 50 miles west of Sao Paulo in soccer mad Brazil. The 5-foot, 8-inch tall right-hander could get a lot more attention July 2, when Major League Baseball teams can begin signing international players. Pardinho is No. 5 on MLB.com’s list of 30 world prospects to watch.  

 

Pretty impressive for a kid who was introduced to baseball almost by accident.

“I am only here because at 6 years of age I was playing paddleball on the beach and my uncle thought my control could be good for baseball back in Bastos,” he said.

Also throws change, slider

Bastos is a small town outside of Sao Paulo with a sizeable Japanese population. The Japanese began bringing their love of baseball and sushi to Brazil in the early 1900s.

Pardinho, whose mother’s parents are Japanese, started gaining attention last year when he struck out 12 in a win over the powerhouse Dominican Republic at the under-16 Pan Am Games. In September he got two outs against Pakistan — both strikeouts — in a qualifier for the World Baseball Classic, a 10-0 win played in New York City.

The young Brazilian’s changeup and slider have also earned praise from local coaches, who already see at him as a potential national star for baseball’s return to the Olympics in 2020 at Tokyo. At the moment Brazil has only one player in MLB, the Cleveland Indians catcher Yan Gomes.

Since January, more and more visitors have come to watch Pardinho workout at a new MLB-sponsored training center in Ibiuna, another city influenced by baseball-loving Japanese immigrants.

Eager to sign

Pardinho is eager to sign with a team and move to the United States.

“There is a lot that I will only learn when I go,” said Pardinho.

 

The pitcher said his height should not be an issue, though his family members still hope that he will grow more in the next year.

“Some time ago there was an issue with shorter players, but now there are teams that don’t care. It matters more that I have a safe fastball and two more good options, including a curveball that I control well,” he said.

‘He destroys them all’

Other MLB hopefuls agree: facing Pardinho is a huge challenge.

“Pardinho’s curveball is amazing, he is more than fast. His height doesn’t matter because his arm can do wonders,” said third baseman Victor Coutinho, also 16.  

 

Also a pitcher, Heitor Tokar practices with Pardinho every day and believes in his friend’s future in the sport.

“Pardinho doesn’t feel any difference when he throws against players taller than him, he destroys them all,” Tokar said.

Even Pardinho’s coach, Mitsuyoshi Sato, knows the teen is headed for bigger challenges, and protects his arm. Sato pitches the soon-to-be pro no more than two innings at weekend tournaments.  

Room for improvement

 

Pardinho’s father Evandro makes the hour-plus drive from Bastos to check on his son, and Sato makes sure Pardinho is a priority for Yakult training center medics. Pardinho has the support of an orthopedist, a physiotherapist and a fitness trainer. He also has a technical trainer.

“He still has to improve physically and mentally. I don’t want him to do too many fastballs now because I worry about a possible injury,” said Sato. “No arm is prepared to pitch that fast, much less the arm of a kid.”  

 

Sato believes Pardinho has room for improvement in the control of his changeup so he can spare his arm and shoulder.

Pardinho thinks if he has success, he could change baseball in Brazil.

“If I do well, maybe more and more Brazilians, not only those of Japanese heritage, will think of playing on a diamond, too.”

 
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Tennis star Venus Williams is being sued by the family of a man who died in a car crash in which she was involved.

Court officials in Palm Beach County, Florida, confirmed that the family of Jerome Barson, 78, filed the lawsuit against Williams on Friday.

A police report released Thursday described Williams as being “at fault” in the incident, which took place this month. Police have not charged Williams with an offense.

An attorney for Barson’s wife, Linda, who was driving at the time of the crash, accuses Williams of running a red light as well as inattentive and negligent driving.

The attorney, Michael Steinger, said he thought there might be video of the crash that was captured by surveillance cameras at the guard houses protecting Williams’ neighborhood.

An attorney for Williams, Malcolm Cunningham, said she entered a six-lane intersection on a green light but got stuck in traffic while trying to turn. The light then turned red while Williams was still making her turn, he said.

Williams said she didn’t see the Barsons’ car before she crossed into their lane. Jerome Barson spent two weeks in a hospital with a fractured spine and internal injuries before he died.

Williams is in England preparing to play in the Wimbledon championships, where she has won the women’s singles title five times. Her younger sister, Serena Williams, the world’s fourth-ranked women’s tennis player, is not playing in the tournament because she is pregnant.
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Paul McCartney has reached a confidential settlement of his lawsuit against Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC in which he sought to reclaim copyrights to songs by the Beatles.

The accord disclosed Thursday in filings with the U.S. District Court in Manhattan ends McCartney’s pre-emptive effort to ensure that the copyrights, once owned by Michael Jackson, would go to him starting in October 2018.

U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos signed an order dismissing the case, but agreed to revisit it if a dispute arose.

The dismissal request had been made by Michael Jacobs, a lawyer for McCartney, on behalf of the singer and Sony/ATV.

It was unclear how the accord affects McCartney’s copyright claims. The singer’s representatives could not immediately be reached Friday for comment.

McCartney, 75, had sued on January 18 for a declaration that he could reclaim more than 260 copyrights, including for songs credited to him and John Lennon such as I Want to Hold Your Hand, Yesterday and Hey Jude.

The registrations at issue also covered Maybe I’m Amazed and several other songs McCartney recorded as a solo artist. They even covered such titles as Scrambled Egg, which is close to the working lyric Scrambled Eggs that McCartney once used for the song that became Yesterday.

McCartney had been outbid by Jackson in 1985 for the Beatles’ song rights, which were later rolled into Sony/ATV, a joint venture with Sony Corp. The pop star’s estate sold its stake in that venture to Sony for $750 million last year.

McCartney sued a month and a half after a British court said the pop group Duran Duran could not reclaim rights to its songs, in its case against Sony/ATV’s Gloucester Place Music unit.

Changes made in 1976 to U.S. copyright law let authors like McCartney reclaim song rights after periods of time elapsed.

In his lawsuit, McCartney said he could begin exercising his rights on Beatles songs, starting with Love Me Do, on October 5, 2018.
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Prumsodun Ok, a Cambodian-American born to refugee parents, knew he wanted to be an “apsara” dancer from the age of 4, when he was entranced by a performance captured on one of his family’s home movies.

No matter that the dance dated back to the seventh century, or that traditionally apsaras were beautiful, heaven-born females, destined to entertain gods and kings at the Angkor temples in the ancient Khmer Empire, modern-day Cambodia. Ok focused on the stylized grace of the dancing and thought little about the fact that the dancers were women, because he was a kid and he had a dream.

But he put that on hold for 12 years. 

Growing up in Long Beach, California, home to 20,000 Khmer immigrants, Ok was bullied because he was “different.” He recalls being branded as gay and “kteu” — Thai or Cambodian slang for someone who is born male but acts or looks female — when he was 5. That name calling led him to self-identify as gay in his teens.

“I don’t know when I knew,” Ok said about realizing that he was gay, “but I can say that I only became comfortable in my latter years of high school. This is me, this is who I am, and no one can change that or take that away from me.”

That was about the time when, after years of watching his younger sister practice traditional Khmer dances, that he found the courage to approach her dance master.

A rising star among dance students

“I really love dance. Can you please teach me?” Ok pleaded, and Sophiline Cheam Shapiro agreed. Teenager Ok quickly became a rising star at her Khmer Arts Academy in Long Beach, which is affiliated with an arts ensemble in Cambodia.

The school, founded by Shapiro, teaches traditional arts to Cambodian-Americans. Shapiro was one of the first graduates from Phnom Penh’s School of Fine Arts after the fall of the Pol Pot regime and is revered as one of Cambodia’s leading contemporary dance choreographers.

In 2015, Ok, now 30, moved to Cambodia and established Prumsodun Ok & NATYARASA, the country’s first gay dance company. Male dancers ages 18 to 24 fill roles traditionally performed by women. The troupe stages Khmer classical dances as well as new works that Ok creates.

“What I’m doing is drawing from our traditions and using these traditions in ways that people could never imagine to create a more inclusive and compassionate and just Cambodia,” he said.

Coming from “a long tradition of people who are in the service of society … of humanity,” Ok said he has learned “that service is not just about being comfortable: those who are comfortable are not always necessarily right.”

Cambodian society’s tolerance

Srun Srorn, 36, the founder of CamASEAN and a human rights activist, told VOA Khmer that while the majority of LGBTQ Cambodians are marginalized and discriminated against, society is more tolerant of their role in the arts.

Ok’s group “is more professional, so I think it will bring the positive [response] from the community,” Srorn said. “So far, this part of the art — performing — is not getting any negative reaction from the public.

Ok says his role as a teacher of dance goes beyond the classroom.

“Getting them to learn how to see, getting them to have the courage to ask questions, getting them to have the bravery to explore things on their own,” he said. “Those are the most essential things that a teacher of any art form, or discipline or medium, needs to inspire in their students.”

Choung Veasna, 19, of Phnom Penh, says Ok gave him confidence: “I’ve learned from my teacher that no matter what people say about you, it doesn’t matter.”

Tes Sokhon, 24, from Pailin province, the oldest dancer in the group, says his teacher is inspiring. 

“He’s more than my idol,” Sokhon said. “He’s the first teacher to train me in classical dance. He provides us with income and makes our lives better.”

​‘Combination of beauty and tradition’

The troupe’s passion for classical Khmer dance has not gone unnoticed.

Craig Dodge, director of sales and marketing at Phare, the Cambodian Circus performance troupe in Siem Reap, said: “When I watched the video on their homepage and heard the young men talk about what performing has meant to them, their identity and their self-esteem, it made me cry.”

Courtesy Prumsodun Ok and NATYARSA 

 

Dodge worked with Ok to make the troupe’s Siem Reap debut in Cambodia’s artistic center a reality, by tapping into the city’s strong sense of community, which he describes as “the perfect place for nurturing and presenting traditional and new Cambodian creative expression.”

Resident Darryl Collins, an art historian, is providing the venue without charge because “the combination of beautiful and traditional 100-year-old Khmer houses with an elegant contemporary form of classical dance seemed an exciting collaboration.”

Other Siem Reap businesses are pitching in with free accommodations, transportation, security and are helping stage the performances July 14 and 15.

Prumsodun Ok & NATYARASA is scheduled to perform three dances: PRUM x POP, ranging from Khmer classical dance to pop music; Beloved, which explores a 13th century Khmer king’s love for his land; and Robam Santhyea Vehea, a tale of love and marriage of two men.

Ok hopes an open-minded audience will see the performance as a measure of how LGBTQ people can create art in their communities.

“I want the company to be a model for compassion, for bravery, for beauty,” he said.
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In the verdant rainforests of Hawaii, Jack Black, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Kevin Hart and Karen Gillan simulated dodging rampaging rhinos and hungry hippos as they filmed the long-anticipated sequel to the Robin Williams 1995 adventure film Jumanji.

The first trailer for Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, released Thursday, shows how four high school teenagers are transported into a Jumanji video game as adult avatars and find themselves pursued by jungle creatures and motorcycle assailants, jumping into waterfalls and encountering perilous caves.

The first Jumanji told the story of a boy trapped in the magical board game for 26 years. He is released as a grown man (Williams) when two children discover the game.

As they start playing again, stampeding elephants and wild creatures escape from the Jumanji jungle into the real world, causing havoc in a small town.

In the sequel, due out in theaters on Dec. 20, viewers are meant to get a sense of being pulled back into the alternative world of the board game jungle.

“This has the original energy and magic of the classic that everyone saw 20 years ago but, this time, I like to tell people it’s in the game,” Black told Reuters in interviews from the Hawaii set of the film.

“I’d say that our movie is on a grander scale because it’s a whole universe of Jumanji,” he added.

To kick off the sequel, four high school teenagers forced to clean out their school’s basement while in detention come across an old Jumanji video game. They soon wind up being transported into the game, as the adult video game avatars that they pick.

A nerdy teen becomes the muscle-bound Johnson, a blonde cheerleader transforms into the bespectacled Black, an introverted girl becomes a skimpily-clad Gillan, while a buff football player transforms into the diminutive Hart.

Johnson said the sequel pays homage to Williams, who committed suicide in 2014.

“In terms of Robin and our story, it’s done with so much love and respect that I think we’re putting ourselves in a really good position, and I think fans will love it,” he said.
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Fans were crawling up the walls with excitement as the stars of Spider-Man: Homecoming swung into the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe series of films, which have dominated the global box office for years.

British actor Tom Holland, who plays the web-slinging hero, showed up at Wednesday’s premiere accompanied by an actor in full Spider-Man costume who was lying on the hood of a car and performing back flips for the crowd.

“I think for me I’ve realized the responsibility of being a role model for young kids everywhere,” Holland told reporters, adding that the character’s motto that “with great power comes great responsibility” resonated with him.

The film is the first time that Spider-Man, one of Disney-owned Marvel’s most popular characters, is the lead in a film set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, championed the cause of getting Spider-Man into the Disney-run sphere.

“Now we have the first time Spider-Man in the Marvel Universe where he belongs,” he stated at the premiere, adding, “I sort of am still pinching myself. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe we’re premiering the movie tonight and I can’t wait for people to see it.”

The film sees Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr., another staple of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, who has been featured in several of the series’ films, taking a co-starring role alongside Holland.

The film is to be released in European cinemas on July 5 and in U.S. theaters on July 7.
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Whether it’s at a bar or baseball park, Lady Gaga says she’s going to give every performance her all.

The singer will launch a summer tour with stops at arenas and stadiums across the globe, and she’s also returning to the Dive Bar Tour with Bud Light to perform a show in Las Vegas on July 13.

She called the first bar crawl, completed last fall around the release of “Joanne,” a deep experience.

“For what it’s worth, when I got up there, I totally forgot where we were and I just went into performance mode,” she said in a phone interview. “For me, no matter how small a venue is, you don’t perform it differently than you perform at a big venue, that’s not fair to the fans.”

Last year’s tour included a stop at The Bitter End, the New York City bar where Gaga performed before her pop star days. The new Dive Bar Tour will also include shows in Los Angeles (July 26) and New Orleans (August 30), to be headlined by other artists, who will be announced soon.

Gaga, 31, will launch a world tour on Aug. 1 in Vancouver, British Columbia. It includes stops at baseball parks like Citi Field in New York, AT&T Park in San Francisco, Wrigley Field in Chicago and Fenway Park in Boston.

Now that she’s wrapped filming “A Star is Born” with Bradley Cooper — an experience she called “life changing,” “wonderful” and “inspiring” — she’s focusing on the massive tour.

“This one will be a little bit different,” she said. “I also like to change things up. “I have some other ideas about how I’d like to perform some of my fans’ classics.”

Part of switching it up comes from the sound of “Joanne,” which includes rock, country and slower songs compared with Gaga’s past electro-flavored dance hits.

“The album is extremely healing and reflective for me. I wrote about things that I’ve never written about before that are extremely deep and personal, and dare I say, things that haunted me, that were poisoning me, that were toxic to me, and I had to get them out. And it was very revealing in that way,” she said.

“The cover of the album is very indicative of that — me putting a hat on that I’ve never worn before and just not sure where I’m going at all — but knowing I got to get out of where I am.”

At the Coachella festival in April, where Gaga headlined, she released “The Cure,” an upbeat song about healing. She said she wrote the song after performing at the Super Bowl halftime show.

She added that she’s writing new music and said she could drop another song unrelated to an album.

“You know, I wouldn’t say that it’s out of the question,” she said.
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The state of Idaho is famous for its potatoes. But it’s also known as a haven for rock-climbers, who come from all over the world to the City of Rocks National Reserve.

Granite City

Granite spires, ranging from 10 to almost 200 meters high, tower over a vast expanse of rock formations of various shapes and sizes. They jut from the ground — seemingly out of nowhere — creating a stark, yet beautiful vista.

The rocks were once buried underneath the ground, but erosion over millions of years exposed them… creating the surreal landscape.

National parks traveler Mikah Meyer explained, “It’s difficult to capture on film, but all these rocks, when you move even just 10 feet in one direction, completely change their shape based on whatever angle you’re looking at them from.”

Nature’s sculptures

Mikah especially liked seeing the smaller rocks, which he called “carve outs from larger boulders,” framed by the snow-capped mountains behind them, off in the distance.

“It really shows the diversity of rock types and views that you can have here at City of Rocks,” he said.

Mikah enjoyed a scenic hike to one of the reserve’s most popular sites, Window Arch, which he described as “the most interesting rock formation I’ve seen here at City of Rocks.”

Window Arch is a great example of weathered granite; a result of the powerful forces of nature, which create beautiful, graceful forms.

History rocks!

The ancient landscape also has a colorful, more recent history.  In the 1840s and ‘50s, American settlers traveled through the City of Rocks as they headed west with their wagons. In 1852 alone, some 52,000 people passed through the towering boulders on their way to the California goldfields. Those wagon routes were largely abandoned when the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869.

Mikah says the scenic landscape at the reserve has something for everyone.

“If your hope is to see amazing vistas and interesting views, definitely stick to the main road and areas of wide-open grassy spaces. If your goal is to climb and climb in seclusion, get onto the trails where you’ll find many rocks that allow you to have it all to yourself.”

Mikah, who’s on a mission to visit all 417 units within the National Park Service, invites you to learn more about his travels across America by visiting him on his website, Facebook and Instagram.
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Beside a quiet stream on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a 19th century brick house that once served as a way station on the Underground Railroad can bring present-day visitors to tears as they gaze at the path where escaped slaves made their way to freedom.

 

The Jacob and Hannah Leverton house is among 36 sites along the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway. The 125-mile route has been getting fresh attention in recent months as the nation and the world take more notice of Tubman’s heritage as a hero of freedom.

Tubman, who escaped from slavery in antebellum Maryland to become a leading abolitionist, helped other slaves escape by guiding them north on the Underground Railroad and served as a Union spy during the Civil War.

 

“It’s hard to identify with George Washington, unless you’re an older white male. But when it comes to Tubman, there’s so many ways that people of all backgrounds and races … can find something that they can see in themselves that she has carried forward or she held herself,” says Kate Larson, an author and historian who has written about Tubman and worked as a consultant on the byway.

 

Fresh Attention

 

The famed Underground Railroad conductor is drawing admiration from new generations.

 

Plans to put her on the $20 bill have received prominent attention, stirring debate about the representation of old white historic figures on the nation’s currency and the lack of women and minorities.

This year, the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution’s new National Museum of American History and Culture in Washington acquired a rare photograph of Tubman in her late 40s.

 

In March, the $21 million Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center opened, not far from her Maryland birthplace.

 

Long Road

 

The designated sites and nearby landscapes offer a comprehensive look into Tubman’s life and journeys along the Underground Railroad, an informal network that helped escaping slaves evade capture and reach free states such as nearby Pennsylvania.

 

After about 18 years of planning, the first stops along the byway were designated in 2013 to coincide with the centennial of Tubman’s death.

“This is just an opportunity for the world to know that Harriet has been a major part of our history in the United States of America,” said Victoria Jackson-Stanley, the first black woman elected mayor of Cambridge, the county seat, not far from where Tubman was born and raised a slave. “She’s a local home girl, as I like to say, but she’s an icon for freedom.”

 

Television Revival

 

Tubman was featured recently in “Underground,” a WGN television drama about the Underground Railroad.

 

Actress Aisha Hinds, who played Tubman, attributes the abolitionist’s increasing prominence partly to the divided times of the present.

 

“I feel like, contextually, what we’re living now is sort of a modern day manifestation and articulation of the times that Harriet Tubman was living and the obstacles that she transcended,” Hinds said at a conference on Tubman in Cambridge, Maryland.

 

Meanwhile, an HBO movie with Viola Davis starring as Tubman is in the works, based on Larson’s book, “Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero.”

 

Act of Defiance

 

The site of Tubman’s first known act of defiance against slavery is one of the most popular stops on the Tubman byway.

 

The Bucktown Village Store has been restored at a rural crossroads believed to be where Tubman refused a slave owner’s orders to help him detain another slave. When the other slave ran, the owner grabbed a 2-pound weight and threw it at him, hitting Tubman on the head and causing an injury that would trouble her for the rest of her life.

The inside still looks like a 19th century shop. The owners have some Tubman-related items, including a newspaper advertising a reward for Tubman and two of her brothers. Susan Meredith, who owns the site with her husband, says people have been stopping more frequently since the visitors’ center opened nearby.

 

“We see people from all over the world that come to see and step in the place that she was in,” Meredith says.

 

Still Developing

 

Some areas with significant links to Tubman’s early life are neither open to the public nor designated on the byway but could one day be purchased by the state. Some related sites have inconsistent hours, depending on when property owners are home, and are still developing under the added attention.

 

The Jacob and Hannah Leverton home, which is on the byway, offers mixed signals. A sign with the words “Private Drive” and “No Trespassing” stands at the foot of the drive, next to an interpretive marker that designates it as a byway stop.

Still, Michael McCrea, who bought the house in the mid-1980s, is enthusiastic about the byway and accommodates visitors, even though the sign remains.

 

“It’s fine,” he says, mentioning that visitors have been undeterred by the sign to get a closer look.

 

McCrea has shown people around the property. Some have cried, he says, while others solemn rub the bricks of the house.

 

“They just can’t believe that it’s here,” McCrea says.
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Halle Berry, the only black woman to ever win a best actress Oscar, said her 2002 win turned out to be meaningless, and Fast and Furious star Michelle Rodriguez warned she might quit the action movie franchise unless filmmakers “show some love for women.”

Their comments proved a reality check for women in Hollywood on Wednesday, even as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said it invited 298 more women to join its ranks in a bid to improve diversity at the organization behind the Oscars.

Berry in 2002 won the best actress Oscar for Monster’s Ball, becoming the first black woman to do so. Fifteen years on, she remains the only woman of color to get the honor.

“Wow, that moment really meant nothing. It meant nothing. I thought it meant something, but I think it meant nothing,” she told Teen Vogue editor Elaine Welteroth in a video interview at the Cannes Lion festival released late Tuesday.

Berry said she reached that troubling conclusion in 2016 when all 20 of the Oscar acting nominees were white, sparking the #OscarsSoWhite backlash.

“I was profoundly hurt by that, and saddened by that,” Berry said, adding that it had prompted her to want to start directing and producing to make more opportunities for actors of color.

Ready to quit

Elsewhere, Rodriguez, who plays Vin Diesel’s love interest in five of the eight Fast and Furious box office hits, suggested she was prepared to quit her role as tough street racer Letty Ortiz over the portrayal of women.

“F8 [the eighth film] is out digitally today,” she wrote on her Instagram account Tuesday above a montage of photos from the film. “I hope they decide to show some love to the women of the franchise on the next one or I just might have to say goodbye to a loved franchise.”

It’s not the first time Rodriguez has spoken out.

In an interview in May with Entertainment Weekly, she said women in action films should have “more female camaraderie, [and have] women do things independently outside of what the boys are doing — now that is truly the voice of female independence.”

The Fast and Furious franchise has taken in more than $5 billion at the box office worldwide since 2001, and two more films are planned for release in 2019 and 2021.
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The writer who created the beloved children’s character Paddington Bear has died.

Michael Bond was 91. His publisher said he died Tuesday after a brief illness.

There are few children who do not recognize and love Paddington and his trademark rain hat and coat and suitcase.

Bond created Paddington in 1956 after spotting a teddy bear sitting alone in a London shop.

In his first adventure, “A Bear Called Paddington,” the character was described as a stowaway from “darkest Peru” who showed up at London’s Paddington train station wearing a sign saying “Please look after this bear. Thank you.”

Since his debut, Paddington has sold more than 35 million books in 40 languages, starred in movies and on television.

Shooting on a new Paddington film wrapped up this week.

Bond once said children are drawn to Paddington because of his “vulnerability.”
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