Jerry Curl

Evan Wade as featured on DNA.

The OC Register is reporting that the first new monorail car in two decades slid onto the Disneyland track on Thursday as the theme park prepares for guests to ride it starting in late February. The ride started in 1959 as part of Disneyland's first expansion and the current cars have carted visitors around the Disney area since 1987. For three years, Disney Imagineers have been working on the upgrades that will roll out through the summer. "I think we're always looking for ways to update and refresh classic attractions," said Scot Drake, the monorail lead designer. "This is definitely an iconic attraction." The biggest change is the look of the train: The first electric cars have blue glass and red stripes that change color in the sunlight. The next two cars will be blue with purple glass and orange with blue glass. Bench seats will face the windows, allowing visitors a full view of the parks, Downtown Disney and the Disneyland Hotel. The capacity and spee...

Ignoring works by Matisse, Renoir and Van Gogh, thieves homed in on just two paintings -- one by Pablo Picasso and another by Candido Portinari -- in the first successful heist in the 60-year history of Brazil's premier modern art museum. Armed with nothing more than a crow bar and a car jack, it took the culprits just three minutes to break into the Sao Paulo Museum of Art before dawn Thursday and steal Picasso's ''Portrait of Suzanne Bloch,'' and Portinari's ''O Lavrador de Cafe.'' Picasso painted the portrait in 1904 during his Blue Period and it is among the most valuable pieces in the museum's collection. Jones Bergamin, a Sao Paulo gallery director, estimated the painting's price at about $50 million. ''It seems obvious it was a made-to-order theft because they went straight to those two paintings and nothing else,'' said the lead police investigator, Marcos Gomes de Moura. ''Everything indicates they wer...

CNN is reporting that protests against a City Council plan to tear down low-income New Orleans housing turned ugly Thursday, with police using pepper spray and stun guns to clear a crowd angry they weren't allowed into City Hall for the vote. The City Council voted unanimously to greenlight the demolition of the city's four largest public housing developments, saying they are too damaged by Hurricane Katrina to allow residents back into them. But many in New Orleans, including former residents of the developments, say they fear the local and federal governments will not guarantee similarly affordable housing be built in their place -- calling the demolition an effort to move poor people out of the city. At about 11 a.m., several protesters were dragged out of council chambers after scuffles broke out among people who packed the room, and members of the crowd booed council members and shouted insults at them. About 30 minutes later, hundreds more protesters angry that they were...

"There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender... Identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results." - Judith Butler

By Walt Handelsman

Taylor Kitsch