Compensation approved for Michael Jackson estate administrators

Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff approved the compensation for attorney John Branca and music executive John McClain, who have been administering the singer's estate since shortly after his death on June 25.

Branca and McClain will each receive 5 percent of the estate's profits, minus earnings from the recent This Is It movie and Jackson's interest in lucrative Sony-ATV music catalog.

Beckloff approved the arrangement after discussing it with various attorneys representing Branca, McClain, Jackson's children and the singer's mother, Katherine Jackson.

None raised any objections to the arrangement.

Howard Weitzman, an attorney for Branca and McClain, said the men would be fairly compensated but likely receive less money than if they received guideline amounts for administering Jackson's estate, which has an estimated value of more than $500 million.

“They will be fairly compensated,” Weitzman said.

Katherine Jackson's attorney, Adam Streisand, agreed.

“I think that this is very reasonable,” he said. “There is an incentive for the executors to grow the business and that will, of course, affect their compensation.”

Weitzman noted that Branca represented Michael Jackson throughout his life and that McClain is a childhood friend of the singer.

Beckloff is retaining some oversight over the payments and scheduled a progress report for September. But he expressed faith in Branca's leadership of the estate. The judge recalled a hearing last year in which Branca testified by phone about his business connections and a deal Jackson merchandise and a memorabilia exhibition.

“I found him extraordinarily impressive,” Beckloff said, noting that's not a distinction he normally draws about people from a phone conversation.

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

AP-WS-02-03-10 1853EST

Guilty plea in Shea Stadium theft

NEW YORK (AP) - A Brooklyn man who worked as a security guard during the demolition of Shea Stadium has pleaded guilty to stealing Mets memorabilia.

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said Gerald Tacopino pleaded guilty to petit larceny on Wednesday.

Tacopino was fined $500 and sentenced to a conditional discharge, provided he pays $842.50 in restitution. He also was ordered to stay away from the new Mets stadium, Citi Field, for one year.

The district attorney said various stadium items were recovered from Tacopino's apartment in December 2008. They included Mets security jackets and shirts and seat bottoms and backs.

The 44-year-old man was hired to prevent looting of items that were being removed from Shea Stadium to be sold as memorabilia.

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-ES-01-27-10 1517EST

It's game on for Olympic collectibles ahead of Vancouver

NEW YORK (AP) - Forget limited-edition gold bottles of Coca-Cola and pricey replicas of the Olympic torch. Driving the merchandise machine ahead of the Vancouver Games is a $10 pair of cozy, red mittens helping to raise money for host athletes.

Organizers outfitted thousands of torchbearers with the knitted mitts that sport the Olympic rings and a white maple leaf in each palm. More than 1.5 million pairs have sold since October, enough for at least 1 in 34 Canadians.

"They've really taken the nation by storm,'' said Dennis Kim, director of licensing and merchandising for the Vancouver Organizing Committee, which is using about $4 from each sale to support the country's quest for first-time gold on home turf.

With less than a month to go before the Winter Games' opening ceremony, it is game on in all areas of Olympic merchandising, from "Future Olympian'' sippy cups to vintage apparel.

Are people feeling spendy in these still-shaky economic times?

``It's anyone's guess at this point,'' said Sally Parrott, senior marketing director at Aritzia, a chain of high-end boutiques. "I feel that people are starting to bounce back.''

Aritzia has partnered with Park Life for a laid-back, retro and graphic street line of fashions and accessories. The Vancouver logos and those of previous games were used on a set of white socks, for instance, and there is a fur-lined jacket with Olympic patches in charcoal.

At ralphlauren.com, buyers can personalize Olympic polos with their own names. A top seller for Nike is a red, beanie-style knit hat with a pompom.

Among collectibles, Coca-Cola is offering the shiny gold bottle of Coke with the Vancouver logo. Luxury jeweler Birks designed a sleek, limited edition desktop replica of the torch in a Canadian Alderwood box.

Birks used the Inuit-inspired emblem of the games, a graphic interpretation of an inukshuk, on sterling silver pendants, keychains, cufflinks and bracelets. Organizers say the human-like form with open arms is a symbol of welcome.

For ski, snowboard and ice hockey fans, cowbells await as the traditional way to cheer in Vancouver. Organizers have designed a retro, brass cowbell in large and small sizes with a hand strap to keep them from flying.

For fans left behind but looking to throw an Olympic party in front of their huge-screen TVs, there is Mario & Sonic at the Winter Games for Wii. Selections to compete at home include four-person bobsleigh and wand-driven ice hockey. Be sure to ask guests to bring along their own wands, or stock up yourself.

License holders, sponsors and others tied to the games embrace the honorary Olympic sport of trading and selling lapel pins, pins and more pins. Just about every symbol, special interest or participant is represented in pins, with an official club online at vancouver2010.com.

Looming large in retail pins are the official Olympic mascots: Quatchi, Miga, Sumi and a muskrat pal named Mukmuk. Suggested retail prices range from nearly $7 to $12.00, with accessories that include carry bags and albums.

Pins, to the hard-core, are all about the hunt. They also comprise about 18 percent of the organizers' overall licensing business for the Vancouver Games.

Al Falcao, 70, of Markham near Toronto, has been collecting Olympic pins for 22 years.

"If you can buy it, I'm not interested,'' he said. "When I see a pin, I set my mind on 'Hey, I gotta get that.' Once I got it, I'm on to the next one.''

Falcao has been asked by Coca-Cola to serve as informal "pin ambassador'' during the games. He caught the bug after Calgary in 1988 and has been to every Olympics since 1992, promoting the hobby at alspins.com.

Generally, he said, the scarcer the pin, the more he wants it. That includes pins created by security organizations for internal use, like those of the U.S. Secret Service. He also covets pins with media logos and special issues kept under lock and key by sponsors before the games.

Even the humble Olympic mitten became scarce with stores selling out before Christmas, but there is now plenty to go around. The mittens fill huge bins at the flagship Olympic Superstore inside the Bay, run by the Hudson's Bay Co. in downtown Vancouver.

"It's a very accessible way for people to join in,'' said Valerie Arntzen, 57, as she picked up five pairs there.

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-CS-01-26-10 2218EST

University exhibit shows evolution of comic book heroes

DEKALB, Ill. (AP) – The art of comic books will go on display in the Northern Illinois University Art Museum next week.

Lynne Thomas, head of NIU Libraries' Rare Books and Special Collections department, will curate the exhibit, titled Heroes, Villains and the American Zeitgeist. The pieces in the exhibit were selected to show the internal struggle of comic book heroes and the pop cultural evolutions of the different types of comics in general.

The exhibit is chronological and touches on the history and evolution of comic books within the American cultural landscape. Beginning with the “Golden Age” of comics in the 1930s, the exhibit features several original Detective Comics issues. The exhibit then leads into the ``Modern Era,'' which Thomas describes as anything from the '80s or later.

“What I sort of did was trace this history mostly of heroes,” Thomas said. With the exception of Superman, Thomas said, comic book heroes have traditionally been very dynamic characters, with consistent internal conflicts and personal struggles.

“The other thing I wanted to demonstrate is that diversity goes back (to the '70s and '80s),” Thomas said. “That was a really important thing for the comics industry.”

Thomas also spoke of the changes in readership the comic book industry has reckoned with over the years. From a mainstream product primarily aimed at children to a niche product geared more toward hobbyist adults, Thomas did her best to portray the complex evolution of the comic book industry.

“Comics were sort of a universal thing in the way TV or the Internet is for us,” Thomas said of the way comics originally were included in American culture.

The exhibit culminates in the rise of independent and self-published comics, and also the graphic novel format, in the '90s and on through to today. There also are specific displays highlighting the works of comic book icons Frank Miller and Alan Moore.

Jo Burke, director of the NIU Art Museum, said she asked Thomas to produce this exhibit partly because she finds it unique that NIU Libraries even has such pop culture materials as comic books that date back to the first half of the 20th century.

“I don't even know if people realized we even had (comic books) in the collection,” Burke said. “There's just so many resources over there at the library.”

Heroes, Villains and the American Zeitgeist is one of three installments featured in the NIU Art Museum's current popular culture suite. Other exhibits include Cannonball Press, a collection of wood block prints and Midwestern BLAB! 2,’ which features comic art, illustration, painting and printmaking.

There is a public reception for the three exhibits at 4:30 p.m. Jan. 21 at the NIU Art Museum. The exhibits will be on display until March 13.

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-CS-01-16-10 0505EST

Archie and pals get stamp of approval from USPS

WASHINGTON - This July, the United States Postal Service will be immortalizing the Archie Comics love triangle in an official postage stamp.

The stamp will feature one of the most enduring images of the Riverdale romance—Archie Andrews sipping sharing a soda with his two favorite girls, brunette heiress Veronica Lodge and blonde girl-next-door Betty Cooper. The image symbolizes the ongoing commitment of the strip to depict the goofy adventures of the eternally idealized American teenagers.

Archie Comics is the longest running strip featured in the five stamps in the collection. Titled “Sunday Funnies,” the set will also include Beetle Bailey, Dennis the Menace, Garfield, and Calvin and Hobbes.

# # #

Rarely seen Elvis photos on display at Harley museum

MILWAUKEE (AP) - The Harley-Davidson Museum plans to display a set of rarely seen photos of Elvis Presley to celebrate his birthday.

The 13 photos from the filming of Elvis' "68 Comeback'' TV special will be on view along with his famous red and white motorcycle that is part of the museum's collection.

Elvis owned a number of bikes, and bought this one just before Heartbreak Hotel hit big. The photos are on loan from the Graceland archives.

Visitors who sport Elvis sideburns and sunglasses will get in for $12, which is $4 off the regular price. Also the restaurant on site will feature some of Elvis' favorite dishes, including the peanut butter and banana sandwich.

The exhibit starts Thursday and runs through Jan. 31. Elvis would have turned 75 on Friday, Jan. 8.

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-CS-01-06-10 0601EST

Collectible cigarette lighters exempted from new law in Louisiana

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Nearly two dozen new state statutes take effect in Lousiana with the start of the new year. Some are arcane or technical changes to existing laws while others are more sweeping.

One of the new statutes prohibits the sale of novelty cigarette lighters. An exemption has been written into the statute, however, that exempts cigarette lighters manufactured before 1980, which are considered collectibles.

Violators could be fined up to $250.

___

On the Net:

Louisiana Legislature: www.legis.state.la.us

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-CS-12-30-09 1022EST

'Peanuts' collectibles find home for the holidays

He and his fiancee Karen Terry had to build the shed next to their Prescott residence just to house all of his collection when they merged their homes. It's larger than the store-bought size, and boxes are stacked to the ceiling.

Christmas-related “Peanuts” characters fill the house. It was Karen's idea to find all the “Peanuts” items with a holiday theme and display them, instead of keeping most of them in boxes.

They found that Walker has enough Christmas-themed “Peanuts” ornaments to cover four Christmas trees comfortably. Karen bought a rotating artificial tree for the living room display.

Outdoors, they have set up three large Snoopy inflatables, lined up Snoopy characters on the porch railings and set up Snoopy flags on the roofline.

In case that's not a hint, Snoopy, by far, is Walker's favorite “Peanuts” character.

“Snoopy's a dog of the world,” he explained, citing how Snoopy imitates everything from a World War I flying ace to a wilderness scout. “He's socially acceptable to every gender and every environment.”

Walker moved around a lot as a child, living with relatives and then becoming homeless when his father was ill. He and his six siblings ended up in foster homes.

His foster mother introduced him to Snoopy at about the age of 10, and that's when he started collecting them.

He understands now that he was looking for something that wouldn't go away.

His childhood eventually improved, as his family reunited and moved to Prescott in 1969.

He started collecting more and more Peanuts items, and his friends and family bought him more, too.

“Just one thing led to another,” he said.

Walker and Karen both attended Prescott High School but were four years apart and didn't know each other. They met a couple of years ago through an online dating site and Walker later moved back to Prescott.

“After I met him, I just fell in love with him and Snoopy,” Karen said. “I knew it was a package deal.”

Their wedding at Goldwater Lake next May will include a 2-foot-tall Snoopy and Belle bride and groom, and they're thinking of staying at Camp Snoopy in Southern California for their honeymoon.

Karen has embraced Walker's love for Snoopy, and Walker has embraced the idea of sharing his love of Snoopy with Karen's nine grandchildren – “under close supervision,” Walker added.

Karen said her grandchildren get a big kick out of seeing Snoopy everywhere when they visit Karen and Walker. Her niece, Kelly Campbell, even created a YouTube video about Walker's collection.

Right now, alongside the aforementioned Christmas items, their home features shelves covered with “Peanuts” music boxes and coin banks. The kitchen includes “Peanuts” potholders next to a Snoopy-shaped waffle iron and a newly baked Snoopy-shaped cake.

Walker even found Snoopy on galoshes, water skis, fishing poles and tackle boxes.

Among his oddest items are unauthorized knockoffs that the Charles Schulz family isn't likely to authorize in the future, such as cigarette lighters and shot glasses featuring a pregnant Lucy.

When they want to match their house during the holidays, they dress up in Snoopy earrings, hats and T-shirts.

Walker honestly cannot name his favorite Snoopy item. Among his most prized are his Danbury Collection items such as the “Peanuts” gang sledding down a hill.

And he cannot stop looking for more Snoopy items at thrift stores and garage sales every weekend, although he's afraid to search the Internet sites such as eBay.

How does he know whether he already has something before he buys it?

“I just know,” he said.

Walker and Karen now are working on a Web site at www.peanutswest.com, and they'd love to put all of Walker's collection on display in a museum someday.

“That's our dream,” Karen said.

___

Information from: The Daily Courier, http://www.dcourier.com

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

AP-WS-12-30-09 0301EST

Children's Museum celebrates Barbie's 50th anniversary

“Barbie: The Fashion Experience”' opened Saturday at the museum, which will be its only stop. Sarah Cole, the museum's special and temporary exhibits manager, said she worked with toy maker Mattel to put together the exhibit.

“Our Barbie collection was good,” Cole said, “but not as strong as Mattel's.”

Barbie was introduced to the world at the 1959 New York Toy Fair. Creator Ruth Handler said the doll, based on the German Bild Lilli dolls, represented that women had choices.

The exhibit features a photo timeline of Barbie, life-size Barbie mannequins and a design center where children can create their own fashions using dress forms, computer games and light tables.

Workshops on T-shirt designing, special runway shows and fashion shows also are offered, and visitors can watch Barbie commercials from the 1960s, '70s and '80s.

But a highlight might be the chance to strut down a Barbie catwalk after getting made up.

Makeup artist Misty Al-eryani, founder of FierceLooks, has three looks for children to apply from hygienic single-use trays.

Al-eryani said she created the looks after thinking about her four daughters and other children, and how they would interact with the doll.

“I wanted them to feel as if they were Barbie's best friends or Barbie's little sister,” she said.

Warhol's 1985 Barbie painting is also part of the display. It is the first time the work has been displayed outside California.

The exhibit runs through February 2011.

___

Information from: The Indianapolis Star, http://www.indystar.com

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-CS-12-20-09 1401EST

University of Minnesota making a case for Sherlock Holmes

Deep in an underground cavern at the University of Minnesota lies the world's largest collection of Holmes memorabilia - a cache sure to expand with material from the new Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey Jr. as the pipe-puffing super sleuth.

To many, it's a mystery how this trove of tens of thousands of books, toys, games, posters and recordings - from copies of the Holmes stories owned by the last empress of Russia to an original manuscript page of The Hound of the Baskervilles - ended up at a Midwestern university, half a world away from the foggy London streets of Holmes and his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The answer is elementary, according to Tim Johnson, curator of special collections and rare books at the University of Minnesota Libraries: A “happy series of accidents” involving a retired university librarian, a Nobel Prize laureate and a Holmes fan who took a “vacuum cleaner” approach to collecting.

“People think the Holmes collection ought to be in London. So it's ‘why Minnesota?’ And it's really just this series of happy events that occurred over time,” Johnson said.

Sherlock Holmes, already out in Britain, is being released Christmas Day in the U.S. Directed by Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), the film stars Downey (Iron Man) as a man-of-action Holmes unraveling a nefarious plot by Lord Blackwood in Victorian England with the help of his sidekick Dr. John Watson, played by Jude Law.

The Holmes collection in Minnesota has between 15,000 and 16,000 volumes, and other pieces bring the archive to 60,000 or more, Johnson said. They are kept in a cavern, fitted out for storage, about 85 feet below ground at the Elmer L. Andersen Library, where temperatures and humidity are controlled.

On metal shelves sit memorabilia including magnifying glasses, an ice-cream carton with a cartoon cow wearing Holmes' iconic deerstalker cap and a pillow with an image of Sherlock Hemlock, a Muppet character from Sesame Street.

Los Angeles attorney Les Klinger, who wrote The Annotated Sherlock Holmes series and was a consultant on the new movie, has donated his papers to the university's collection. Other major Holmes or Doyle archives are at Harvard University, the Toronto Public Library and Portsmouth, England.

But Klinger calls Minnesota's collection the “first stop for anybody doing research, because if you're looking for something, it's probably in the collection.”

Johnson says he believes retired university librarian E.W. McDiarmid, a Holmes fan, “whispered in the ear” of Johnson's predecessor that the university ought to have a collection of first-edition Holmes stories.

The school began amassing the Sherlock Holmes Collections in 1974, buying collector James C. Iraldi's library of Holmes first editions - 160 volumes and a similar number of periodicals. Four years later, Johnson said, the widow of Mayo Clinic doctor Philip S. Hench donated his Holmes collection.

Hench, who shared the 1950 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for developing cortisone to treat pain in arthritic patients, had died in 1965. His Holmes collection was 10 times larger than Iraldi's - about 1,800 books and 1,500 periodicals - and was full of amazing rarities,” Johnson said. That included four copies of Beeton's Christmas Annual, which has the first appearance of Holmes in print, the novella A Study in Scarlet, from November 1887. Only about 30 copies of Holmes' debut are known to exist, Johnson said.

With the donation of the Hench collection, “the Sherlockian world sat up,” Johnson said. One Holmes fan who visited the university was John Bennett Shaw, a collector from Santa Fe, N.M., who acquired Holmes pop culture items such as restaurant menus and board games.

“Shaw had the collecting sensibilities of a vacuum cleaner. It was like anything and everything that had to do with Sherlock Holmes, Shaw collected it,” Johnson said.

The university made Shaw a fellow of the library, and he donated his collection to it in 1993. A sign from Shaw's front yard reading 221B Baker Street - the London address of Holmes and Watson - now stands in the hallway of Andersen Library.

Other collections pulled in by the “gravitational field” of the Hench artifacts include the scripts and broadcast recordings of Edith Meiser, an actress and scriptwriter who did Sherlock Holmes radio plays in the 1930s and ’40s.

The collection is open to the public by appointment and will accept nearly anything people want to donate, Johnson said.

He echoes Shaw's philosophy: “Don't throw it away - send it to me.”

___

On the Net:

The Sherlock Holmes Collections:

http://special.lib.umn.edu/rare/holmes.phtml

Sherlock Holmes movie:

http://sherlock-holmes-movie.warnerbros.com

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

AP-CS-12-16-09 0625EST