Old soap won’t cut it.
New soap brings foamy scented
chic to washing hands.

• • •

Read more haiku.

Find this year’s latest flicks
with our Summer Movie Guide.

Put down “The Da Vinci Code.” Step away from “Blink.”

We know summer isn’t about catching up on your reading. It’s about movies.

And if you’re lucky, free movies.

By now, you’ve been through “The Break-Up” and X-coriated the “X-Men” sequel. But we’ve got a deal for you.

Great movies, great venues. All listed here.

Updated with more movies at the Alabama …

Updated with the 1970s American Film Retrospective …

Updated with African Film Festival …

Updated with Sundown Cinemas in Helena …

(more…)

Remind me to give
you that thing I’m supposed to
return, and your book.

• • •

Read more haiku.

Take one laptop and call me in the morning: A stolen laptop containing confidential info on kidney donors and recipients was taken from UAB’s medical school. Four months ago. Notices went out June 8 after the patient database was reconstructed, giving the thief a lengthy headstart with names, Social Security numbers and medical records of 9,800 people. A university spokesman says the laptop was stolen from a locked, secure office. OK, we’re not sure about the locked part, but we’re pretty sure “secure” means something other than what he’s saying. Next time, how about a head’s up if say, student’s credit card numbers are swiped from the bursar’s office?
• Stolen UAB computer had data on 9,800 people [Birmingham News]

License revoked: Summit Medical Center on Southside surrendered its license last week. The abortion clinic was accused of having nondoctors treating patients, including one woman whose failed abortion led to a ER visit and 6-pound stillborn infant. Surrender of the license means Summit waives its right to a hearing, which had been scheduled for today.

• Safe Haven, a downtown shelter for homeless women with mental illness, opens its doors
• UAB opens a top facility for nonsurgical treatment of heart and vascular diseases
• Gadsden Marine in Iraq witnesses first baby’s birth on Father’s Day via video conference

• Local abortion clinic surrenders license to state Health Department [Birmingham Business Journal]

Research resources reduction: Alabama lost more than a third of its biotech research money from the National Institutes of Health, from $70.2 million in 2004 to $46.6 million in 2005. However, overall federal dollars incresed in the same period from $6.69 billion to $7.54 billion. John Secrist III, vice president of the Drug Discovery division at Birmingham-based Southern Research Institute, said, “You move in the direction of the support,” meaning work on drugs for cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Hodgkin’s diseases.
• Biotech research dollars nosedive [Birmingham Business Journal]

Also:

• Bureaucrats take extra-long smoke break to make up for late arrival
• Budget crisis, day 1: Let’s send out for pizza! No, Chinese!
• Sky is all thunder, no storm

• • •

Send us your news tips.

Cut enough corners
and you’ll eventually
go round in circles.

• • •

Read more haiku.

City Stages 2006 is over, done, packed up and torn down. How did the annual music fest do in its 18th outing?

Despite daily ticket sales off by 30 percent from projections, the festival had its share of victories big and small.

(more…)

Crack of bat sounds weird
when aluminum takes place
of wood. Sound option?

• • •

Read more haiku.

Taylor Hicks and the Little Memphis Blues Orchestra

City Stages 2006 closed out a weekend of perfectly dry weather and crowds a-plenty. Plus, Taylor Hicks, who boosted buzz and attendance, gives a second performance — and all for free. Sunday at a glance …

(more…)

If I seem out of
breath, it’s because I– wait, I
am so out of shape.

• • •

Read more haiku.

Saturday at City Stages 2006 was jam packed with people and performances. Plus, more on Taylor Hicks’ performance with Snoop Dogg and an additional appearance for Sunday. Take a look …

Photo by Dre at Dre’s Ramblings.

(more…)

Putrid odor in
drugstore parking lot forces
drivers to hold breath.

• • •

Read more haiku.

Tamika Moore, Birmingham News

City Stages 2006 is under way. See what you’re missing …

(more…)

The last-minute City Stages roundup …

Festival of debt: City Stages is $530,000 in the hole — with no real plan to pay it off. So says music festival founder and president George McMillan. His latest suggestions include higher ticket prices, more corporate ticket sales, more public funds and more fund-raisers. Fans, public officials, heck most anyone not actually working for the festival have long suspected organizers were short on ideas on long on bills. (For example, an online charity auction with zero publicity.) The first step is admitting you have a problem, but it looks like the second step won’t be paying off the gaping hole of debt.

The three-day event starts tonight downtown; tickets are $28 per day. Headliners include Hank Williams Jr. (pictured), Los Lonely Boys, The Beach Boys, Cameo and Shinedown. The weather: tonight will be hot in the 80s; Saturday afternoon will be partly cloudy and hot, high in the upper 80s, with a chance of early evening thunderstorms, dropping to the upper 70s by nighttime; Sunday afternoon will be partly cloudy and hot, high in the upper 80s, dropping to the upper 70s by nighttime.
• Debt to fade in Stages [Birmingham News]

No vacancy: It’s not all bad news. The festival can take some credit in bringing in tourists to spend money at area hotels and restaurants. Also, on tap this weekend, more than 5,000 Presbyterians meeting at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex. Great, just what we need, all those Presbyterians crowding the after-party at the Nick …
• Convention, City Stages fill city hotels [Birmingham News]

Drop it like it’s Hicks: We swear, we’re not on the chronic when we tell you: The Birmingham News is reporting that on Saturday night, Miller Lite stage headliner Snoop Dogg and hometown hero/American Idol Taylor Hicks will be performing. Together. On the same stage. At 10:50. Our money’s on “P.I.M.P.” or “Let’s Get Blown.” Go, white boy … go, white boy!

• • •

Complete City Stages 2006 coverage.

• • •

In other Idol news:

• Ruben Studdard, Idol 2003, won a $2 million lawsuit against his former manager, who’s in bankruptcy and unlikely to have the cash. Studdard headlined Stages in 2004.
• Birmingham is finally being considered as a site for “Idol” auditions, after its stellar track record with Hicks, Studdard, Bo Bice and Diana DeGarmo. Tryouts could take place this fall at the BJCC.
• Taylor Hicks: People magazine’s Hottest Bachelor.
• And our pal and film producer Alan Hunter is a judge in a new reality show hunting for an acting “Idol.”

• Taylor Hicks will sing with Snoop [Birmingham News]

Also:

• City budget hinges on to-may-to / to-mah-to pronunciation
• Birmingham-Southern to field D-III rock, paper team, adding scissors squad by 2009
• It’s so on, chair people

• • •

Send us your news tips.

Tripping over feet
becomes second nature while
at Vault Dance Depot.

Dancing with the stars
helps newcomers learn to move
in time with music.

• • •

Read more haiku.

For those who love numbers — and I love numbers — and self-congratulatory blather, this is post No. 500 for Wade on Birmingham.

In the past eight months, I’ve covered quite a bit of territory (most of it in hastily written haiku), from current events to state politics, from pop culture to trends of the future. Birmingham is my home, and I love it dearly, warts and all.

So, thank you for reading the site. Your comments, your testimonials and your feedback have been and will always be welcome. Your readership has made this news site the 95,081st most popular site on Technorati! (Watch out, Leaping Sun and Moon Raves o’ the Day — we’re gaining on ya.)

I’ll continue to bring you the best (and worst) in Birmingham and Alabama, with a wink and a smile. Or a lecherous grin. Or gritted teeth. Or rolled eyes. Basically, it’s all going to be emoticons and innuendo.

Thanks again for stopping by.