Joseph Oguiza

They don’t care how big tom hanks is. Vatican to Hanks: Get Lost
The Vatican has told Tom Hanks it doesn't want him in church. It's not his religion they have a problem with - it's the movie he's making.
The producers of Hanks' new movie, Angels and Demons, had asked permission to shoot inside two of Rome's historic churches, Santa Maria del Popolo and Santa Maria della Vittoria. Fuhgeddaboudit, said the diocese of Rome.
Angels and Demons is a prequel to the 2006 movie The Da Vinci Code, based on the blockbuster novel of the same name by Dan Brown, which espoused the controversial (at least to orthodox Christians) theory that Jesus had married Mary Magdalene and had children.
Monsignor Marco Fibbi, a diocesan spokesman, told Reuters that the diocese had denied the filmmakers access to the churches because of the movie's subject matter. "It's a film that treats religious issues in a way that contrasts with common religious sentiment," Fibbi said. "Normally we read the script but this time it was not necessary. The name Dan Brown was enough."

Bo knows guitarsKeeping the Beat Going
BOMP-a-bomp-bomp … bomp-BOMP. If you've ever heard rock-n-roll - whether it was Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, Bruce Springsteen, U2 or anybody in between - you've heard that beat. It was the creation of Elias Otha Bates, better known to the world as Bo Diddley.
Born in Mississippi and raised in Chicago, he reportedly was inspired to start playing guitar by hearing the great bluesman John Lee Hooker and began his career as a street musician. After several years of doing nightclub gigs he released his first record, "Bo Diddley," in 1955, and it rose to the top spot on the R&B charts.
That song introduced the "Bo Diddley beat," described by Wikipedia as "a rumba-like beat similar to 'hambone,' a style used by street performers who play out the beat by slapping and patting their arms, legs, chest, and cheeks while chanting rhymes." The music scholars say Bo Diddley didn't really invent the beat - that it goes back to West Africa. But what the hell do they know.

It's All in the Finger of the Beholder
the chick with the most clicks.Who's the sexiest woman in the world? Upfront has our own opinion (we'll get to that later) but according to the men's on-line magazine FHM, it's Megan Fox, the 21-year-old star of the Transformers movies.
The shapely brunette, notable for her blue eyes and plentiful tattoos, beat out three Jessicas (Biel, Alba and Simpson), two Jennifers (Aniston and Love-Hewitt) and a swarm of Nicoles, Lindsays, Beyonces, Keiras, Charlizes, Halles and Giselles, plus a Fergie, to take top honors in the highly unscientific, on-line poll.

A big T.S. Eliot fan – honest. In news that will bring sorrow to the hearts of porn aficionados everywhere, Upfront has been informed that Sunset Thomas has shot her last XXX-rated feature.
A news release from Vavoom Films (we are not making this up) informed us that Thomas, the self-styled "Princess of Porn," has completed her final sex scene in what will be her final adult film, Into the Sunset. (We suspect the title is a pun.)
"Into the Sunset marks the end of quite an amazing career for this renowned adult superstar," the news release stated. Amazing indeed: The 36-year-old Sunset has starred in more than 100 porn movies going back to the early '90s, including such classics as Red Beaver Bonanza, Lesbians in Tight Shorts, Muffy the Vampire Layer and, most recently, Misty Beethoven, the first porno musical.

A couple of cowboysHe was Moses, Ben-Hur, Michelangelo, El Cid, Andrew Jackson and John the Baptist, not to mention about a hundred other less-well-known historic and fictional figures. But on the screen, Charlton Heston was always Charlton Heston.
Born Charlton Carter in Evanston, IL in 1923, Heston began his acting career on the stage and in TV and appeared in his first movie in 1950. His big break came two years later, when Cecil B. DeMille cast him in the circus movie The Greatest Show on Earth. But it was his performance as Moses in DeMille's 1959 epic The Ten Commandments that turned him into a Hollywood icon.
Other larger-than-life roles followed - notably as the title character in Ben-Hur, where Heston thrilled the kids with the famous chariot race scene (still considered one of the greatest action sequences ever filmed) and made their moms go weak in the knees by displaying his well-sculpted torso as a galley slave in a loincloth.

Your Terminated, "S"ucker. Carla Has the Brits Swooning
 
Members of the Carla Bruni-Sarkozy Fan Club - which includes Upfront, we are proud to state - will be happy to know that they'll have an opportunity next month to purchase a nude photograph of the French first lady.
The catch is that it's expected to cost in the neighborhood of $4,000.
The photo, taken in 1993 by Swiss photographer Michel Comte, will be up for bids at a charity auction April 10 at Christie's in London, along with works by other noted photographers such as Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon and Leni Riefenstahl.

A macabre milestone was passed on Sunday: The 4,000th American soldier was killed in Iraq. The 4,000th death was recorded when four troops were killed by a roadside bomb that exploded near their vehicle in southern Baghdad.
The American death toll since the invasion of Iraq five years ago this month has now exceeded by 1,002 the number killed in the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001. It does not, of course, include the nearly 30,000 US troops who have been wounded in action, nor the Iraqi civilians who have been killed, a number that probably will be forever unknown but that has been estimated at more than 600,000.
Vice President Dick Cheney (he of the five Vietnam-era draft deferments) was interviewed by ABC News on Monday and asked to comment about the 4,000 American troop deaths. He seemed to think they were not that big a deal, pointing out that those who went to Iraq all volunteered for military service.

Alert Source readers will remember that we sent H. Bruce Miller under not-so-deep cover last week to investigate rumors that there is no standard for pint glasses or pours in local bars and pubs. Shocking stuff. And in fact, we found a wide variety of glasses, prices and beer volume when we put local pints to the test, via Mr. Miller's trusty measuring cup.
So it was probably no great surprise that we got a call from one of those establishments demanding a recount, or repour, if you will. Bend Brewing Company owner Wendy Day told Source staffers that her pints had been given the short end of the stick and challenged us to repeat the experiment using a more sound methodology. Never one to pass up a drinking challenge, Upfront moseyed down to BBC on St. Patty's day and bellied up to the bar. We warmed up our glasses with a pint of BBC's Dry Irish Stout and got down to business.
We can't speak to how much beer our intrepid reporter was served on his earlier visit, but our glasses were poured to the rim with about a quarter inch of creamy head. As far as volume, we found that the glasses on that day, and presumably every other day, held a full 16 ounces of liquid as measured by Wendy's in-house measuring cup, which we assume is in compliance with all known international regulations. That's a little different than what our story said. We're sorry about that Wendy and Co.
We've ordered a thorough review of the Source's science curriculum and banned any use of measuring cups in the field. In the meantime, we'll have another stout to go with our dish of crow.

In Washington, Golf Becomes a Handicap

Oregon Republican Sen. Gordon Smith is one of Capitol Hill's most enthusiastic and skillful golfers - so much so that he made Golf Digest's 2005 list of Washington's Top 200 Golfers.

But Gordo's name is missing from the 2007 list. Smith, whose handicap was given as 4.5 in 2005, told the magazine he hadn't been playing enough last year to determine his handicap - too busy campaigning for re-election.