Day after Christmas promises huge sales 2008

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The malls are empty, parking spaces are unlimited. Retailers and shoppers take a rest from the mad dash for holiday gifts but only for a day. Expect the day after Christmas to be crazy.

The sales ads are staggering. Department stores are offering 50 to 80 percent off clothing and accessories. Retailers are hoping to profit whether or not you shopped all the way up until Christmas day.

"The retailers are struggling this year to get people to come and shop. The other problem is this weekend when stores were advertising 50, 60, 70 percent off, those consumers who were done didn't come out and shop this was one of the worst retail weekends in five years less," says FOX 35 Consumer Expert Britt Beemer.

It sounds like a good plan but will it work? The economic outlook still looks grim and many shoppers aren't sure what the future will hold.

Beemer says in times like these, shoppers go into a survival mindset and slash spending by 30 and 40 percent.

eartha kitt santa baby

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....................NEW YORK (AP) — Eartha Kitt, a sultry singer, dancer and actress who rose from South Carolina cotton fields to become an international symbol of elegance and sensuality, has died, a family spokesman said. She was 81.

Andrew Freedman said Kitt, who was recently treated at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, died Thursday in Connecticut of colon cancer.

Kitt, a self-proclaimed "sex kitten" famous for her catlike purr, was one of America's most versatile performers, winning two Emmys and nabbing a third nomination. She also was nominated for several Tonys and two Grammys.

Her career spanned six decades, from her start as a dancer with the famed Katherine Dunham troupe to cabarets and acting and singing on stage, in movies and on television. She persevered through an unhappy childhood as a mixed-race daughter of the South and made headlines in the 1960s for denouncing the Vietnam War during a visit to the White House.

Through the years, Kitt remained a picture of vitality and attracted fans less than half her age even as she neared 80.

When her book "Rejuvenate," a guide to staying physically fit, was published in 2001, Kitt was featured on the cover in a long, curve-hugging black dress with a figure that some 20-year-old women would envy. Kitt also wrote three autobiographies.

Once dubbed the "most exciting woman in the world" by Orson Welles, she spent much of her life single, though brief romances with the rich and famous peppered her younger years.

After becoming a hit singing "Monotonous" in the Broadway revue "New Faces of 1952," Kitt appeared in "Mrs. Patterson" in 1954-55. (Some references say she earned a Tony nomination for "Mrs. Patterson," but only winners were publicly announced at that time.) She also made appearances in "Shinbone Alley" and "The Owl and the Pussycat."

Her first album, "RCA Victor Presents Eartha Kitt," came out in 1954, featuring such songs as "I Want to Be Evil," "C'est Si Bon" and the saucy gold digger's theme song "Santa Baby," which is revived on radio each Christmas.

The next year, the record company released follow-up album "That Bad Eartha," which featured "Let's Do It," "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and "My Heart Belongs to Daddy."

In 1996, she was nominated for a Grammy in the category of traditional pop vocal performance for her album "Back in Business." She also had been nominated in the children's recording category for the 1969 record "Folk Tales of the Tribes of Africa."

Kitt also acted in movies, playing the lead female role opposite Nat King Cole in "St. Louis Blues" in 1958 and more recently appearing in "Boomerang" and "Harriet the Spy" in the 1990s.

On television, she was the sexy Catwoman on the popular "Batman" series in 1967-68, replacing Julie Newmar who originated the role. A guest appearance on an episode of "I Spy" brought Kitt an Emmy nomination in 1966.

"Generally the whole entertainment business now is bland," she said in a 1996 Associated Press interview. "It depends so much on gadgetry and flash now. You don't have to have talent to be in the business today.

"I think we had to have something to offer, if you wanted to be recognized as worth paying for."

Kitt was plainspoken about causes she believed in. Her anti-war comments at the White House came as she attended a White House luncheon hosted by Lady Bird Johnson.

"You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed," she told the group of about 50 women. "They rebel in the street. They don't want to go to school because they're going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam."

For four years afterward, Kitt performed almost exclusively overseas. She was investigated by the FBI and CIA, which allegedly found her to be foul-mouthed and promiscuous.

"The thing that hurts, that became anger, was when I realized that if you tell the truth — in a country that says you're entitled to tell the truth — you get your face slapped and you get put out of work," Kitt told Essence magazine two decades later.

In 1978, Kitt returned to Broadway in the musical "Timbuktu!" — which brought her a Tony nomination — and was invited back to the White House by President Jimmy Carter.

In 2000, Kitt earned another Tony nod for "The Wild Party." She played the fairy godmother in Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella" in 2002.

As recently as October 2003, she was on Broadway after replacing Chita Rivera in a revival of "Nine."

She also gained new fans as the voice of Yzma in the 2000 Disney animated feature "The Emperor's New Groove.'"

In an online discussion at Washingtonpost.com in March 2005, shortly after Jamie Foxx and Morgan Freeman won Oscars, she expressed satisfaction that black performers "have more of a chance now than we did then to play larger parts."

But she also said: "I don't carry myself as a black person but as a woman that belongs to everybody. After all, it's the general public that made (me) — not any one particular group. So I don't think of myself as belonging to any particular group and never have."

Kitt was born in North, S.C., and her road to fame was the stuff of storybooks. In her autobiography, she wrote that her mother was black and Cherokee while her father was white, and she was left to live with relatives after her mother's new husband objected to taking in a mixed-race girl.

An aunt eventually brought her to live in New York, where she attended the High School of Performing Arts, later dropping out to take various odd jobs.

By chance, she dropped by an audition for the dance group run by Dunham, a pioneering African-American dancer. In 1946, Kitt was one of the Sans-Souci Singers in Dunham's Broadway production "Bal Negre."

Kitt's travels with the Dunham troupe landed her a gig in a Paris nightclub in the early 1950s. Kitt was spotted by Welles, who cast her in his Paris stage production of "Faust."

That led to a role in "New Faces of 1952," which featured such other stars-to-be as Carol Lawrence, Paul Lynde and, as a writer, Mel Brooks.

While traveling the world as a dancer and singer in the 1950s, Kitt learned to perform in nearly a dozen languages and, over time, added songs in French, Spanish and even Turkish to her repertoire.

"Usku Dara," a song Kitt said was taught to her by the wife of a Turkish admiral, was one of her first hits, though Kitt says her record company feared it too remote for American audiences to appreciate.

Song titles such as "I Want to be Evil" and "Just an Old Fashioned Girl" seem to reflect the paradoxes in Kitt's private life.

Over the years, Kitt had liaisons with wealthy men, including Revlon founder Charles Revson, who showered her with lavish gifts.

In 1960, she married Bill McDonald but divorced him after the birth of their daughter, Kitt.

While on stage, she was daringly sexy and always flirtatious. Offstage, however, Kitt described herself as shy and almost reclusive, remnants of feeling unwanted and unloved as a child. She referred to herself as "that little urchin cotton-picker from the South, Eartha Mae."

For years, Kitt was unsure of her birthplace or birth date. In 1997, a group of students at historically black Benedict College in Columbia, S.C., located her birth certificate, which verified her birth date as Jan. 17, 1927. Kitt had previously celebrated on Jan. 26.

The research into her background also showed Kitt was the daughter of a white man, a poor cotton farmer.

"I'm an orphan. But the public has adopted me and that has been my only family," she told the Post online. "The biggest family in the world is my fans."

By POLLY ANDERSON

Best Video Game Trailers of 2008

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A good video game trailer leaves you doubled over on the floor, panting with anticipation, chewing nervously on your wallet in hopes that $60 will magically emerge just in time for the game's release. Your pulse quickens, your eyes dilate, you pray that the little YouTube progress bubble doesn't catch up with the end of the red buffering line. Watching game trailers can be a pretty heady experience. A good video game trailer will make bad games look awesome, and awesome games look magnificent. Here are Paste's favorites of 2008.

RAGE
The studio behind Doom is still developing its buggy-racing, mutant-shooting action spectacular. With Fallout 3 having already perfected the Mad Max experience, it's a good thing there's enough post-apocalyptic fun to spread around. And the trailer gets extra points for having a cameo from Goonies character Sloth. If it's not him, it's his brother Quasimodo.

Brütal Legend

Tim Schafer, the lead designer on Psychonauts and Grim Fandango, has teamed up with Jack Black for this heavy-metal, head-rolling odyssey. Cartoon violence has never gone quite so far over the top, which probably has something to do with the corrupting influence of rock 'n' roll. Parents, consider yourself warned: no matter how desperately you beg for a turn, your brat won't turn over the controller. (In case you're slow on the uptake, he's fighting with an axe, which is also a nickname for an electric guitar.)

Mirror's Edge
Maybe I'm just a sucker for the game's theme song "Still Alive" by Lisa Miskovsky (buy the radio edit on iTunes and watch the playcount soar), but the Mirror's Edge trailer rocks me pretty hard.
Fallout 3
This teaser trailer damn near made me weep, mainly because I first saw it over a year before the game was scheduled for release. The contextual irony of the Ink Spots song lyrics made me chuckle and the slow reveal gave me goosebumps. Then when the Brotherhood of Steel solider turns and looks at you in the final moment, I almost wet my pants. Almost wetting your pants means the trailer has done its job with ruthless efficiency.
Dead Space

The trailer for a survival-horror game should leave you rummaging for your childhood blanky and a night light to plug in before you climb into bed. While Dead Space's Lullaby Teaser Trailer was incredibly effective with its spooky child-singing, the extra gameplay in the standard trailer packs extra punch. This game had atmosphere to spare. And you can feel it spilling over in the trailer.
Gears of War 2

The Ian McKellen-style voiceover reciting Alan Seeger's poem "I Have A Rendezvous With Death" combined with the drama of the subterranean battlefield—beautiful, grim, straightforward, effective. For a few brief seconds, this funner-than-fun action blockbuster feels like it has brains to match its brawn.
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

If I didn't have such an addictive gaming personality and trusted myself to dabble in MMORPGs, this trailer would have me asking, "World of Whatcraft?" Epic, sexy, stylish, exciting. I had so much fun watching the trailer, I found myself secretly pining for a feature-length version of this animated short. Instead the world will get another installment of Shrek. Burnish your Elven mythril chestplate and savor the fantasy flavor!

Moore music for the new year

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'Purlie' star Melba Moore comes to the Rrazz Room

One afternoon in the late 60s, a 20-something Melba Moore was working a recording gig. "These two hippies, who didn't have sense enough to put on shoes even though they were in a recording studio in New York City, walked in and asked me if I wanted to do Hair . I said, 'Excuse me, but I did not get a Bachelor's Degree in Music to do nobody's hair.'" She laughs long and hard. "I was an educated fool!"

Moore opens at the Rrazz Room at Hotel Nikko this Saturday, and is ringing in the New Year with sistah diva Darlene Love.

Yes, she did the then-infamous Hair nude scene. "I was there when it was created, and it was fun and exciting. We were past previews, and someone on the creative team came up with the idea. At first, it caused something of a breach with the cast. Here we are doing this show about freedom, then we're told we have to do something that we might not like." When the costume-dropping was made optional, the concept was embraced. "As it turned out, eventually most everybody wanted to do it, to experience it, for various reasons."

She stayed with the show for 18 months, eventually inheriting the role of Sheila from an Annie Hall-bound Diane Keaton. "Before Hair, I wasn't really into Broadway. I saw a few shows, but it wasn't a dream for me." A castmate in the show suggested she start auditioning for other shows, if not for the roles, at least for the experience, and told her of an open call for a new show. "That's the spirit in which I went up for Purlie. I didn't know the language – stage right, stage left, nothing – and I got the part!" As Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins, Moore stopped the show nightly with the joyous "I Feel Love," and picked up a slew of that season's awards, including a Tony for Featured Actress in a Musical.

Flush with success, Moore returned to her first love and launched a recording career that saw multiple Grammy nominations throughout the 70s. She returned to Broadway in Geoffrey Holder's visually exotic but troubled production of Timbuktu! On her co-star Eartha Kitt, Moore demurs. "Let's just say I have better memories of Eartha after the show closed. She was going through some problems, and basically was not a nice person to be around at the time. It was a beautiful show and should have toured and been recorded, but Eartha really slam-dunked it. She killed it. I hope somebody does it again someday."

For her current gig, she's definitely feeling the Love. "We started having fun from the first rehearsal!" she beams. Though this gig marks their duo debut, the ladies have followed a parallel path of early success, a long and painful intermission, and a solid second act. In Moore's case, a sudden divorce left her financially destitute and questioning her future. She is retrospectively pragmatic about that time. "It was the process of going from the mailroom to the CEO position of my life. I have bloomed because I am in control now. You have to be willing to start over again, again and again. I've become a great student."

She's also become a writer and producer, hard at work on the development of Still Standing, an autobiographical musical. "We're taking it on a tour of 13 historically black colleges in Arkansas as a showcase," she says, and is actively seeking collaborators with an eye toward a New York production.

Looking far younger than her 63 years, Moore gives thanks to God, but not without humor. "God has been good to me for a long time," she acknowledges. "He's given me a second chance. He's coming back, you know, and he told me he doesn't want any raggedy, wrinkled-up, nasty-looking divas," she says with a hearty chuckle. A born-again Christian, Moore holds her faith close. "He owns the whole planet. It all belongs to him," she says, the use of personal pronouns emphasizing the intimate relationship she feels. "Those of us who have been given gifts, whatever they may be, are really responsible for doing good things with them. Those of us who have made him first and last make that a [life] study, and we speak about it. With that as my focus, I can go wherever he allows me to go." She admits that showbiz does not frequently create sacred spaces, and reconciling her personal and professional lives can be a challenge. "We have to be the thing that bring sacredness into it, and that's not always religion. We just have to be his emissaries wherever we go."

by Robert Sokol

Obama, 2 aides met with Blagojevich investigators

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WASHINGTON (AP) - President-elect Barack Obama and two of his top aides met last week with federal investigators building a corruption case against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, accused of trying to swap Obama's Senate seat for cash or a lucrative job.

The interviews with Obama, along with incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and adviser Valerie Jarrett, were disclosed Tuesday in an internal report produced for Obama on contacts with Blagojevich. Obama delayed releasing his report until those interviews were completed with U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's staff, incoming White House attorney Greg Craig said in the review he wrote for Obama.

Obama had no contact with the governor or his aides, the report states. Prosecutors have said Obama is not implicated in the case.

Emanuel was the only Obama transition team member who discussed the Senate appointment with Blagojevich, and those conversations were "totally appropriate and acceptable," Craig said Tuesday. No one on Obama's transition team discussed any deals or had any knowledge of deals, Craig's report said.

Sources have said Emanuel is not a target in the case. Jarrett was never a target of the federal investigation, a transition official said.

Craig's report identified close Obama friend Eric Whitaker as someone approached by one of Blagojevich's top aides to learn "who, if anyone, had the authority to speak for the president-elect" about the Senate appointment.

The report states that Obama told Whitaker that "no one was authorized to speak for him" and that "he had no interest in dictating the result of the selection process."

Blagojevich was charged on Dec. 9 with plotting to use his governor's authority to appoint Obama's Senate replacement and make state appointments and contracts in exchange for cash and other favors. He has denied any criminal wrongdoing and has resisted multiple calls for his resignation, including one from Obama.

During Emanuel's interview with federal authorities, he listened to a taped recording of a conversation with Blagojevich's office, according to a transition official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss information not included in the report.

Craig's report states that Emanuel had "one or two telephone calls" with Blagojevich and four conversations with John Harris, the governor's chief of staff who later resigned after being charged in the federal case. Craig told reporters Emanuel said he couldn't be sure it was only one call.

Emanuel left for a long-planned family vacation in Africa on Tuesday and was not available for comment.

The report was released in Washington while Obama was vacationing in Hawaii. The president-elect did not make himself available for questions.

The report said Obama authorized Emanuel to pass on the names of four people he considered to be highly qualified to take over his seat - Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes, Illinois Veterans' Affairs Director Tammy Duckworth, Rep. Jan Schakowsky and Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.

Obama later offered other names of what he thought were qualified candidates, including Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Chicago Urban League Director Cheryle Jackson, the report said.

"Mr. Harris did not make any effort to extract a personal benefit for the governor in any of these conversations," the report said. There was no discussion of a Cabinet position, creation of a nonprofit foundation for Blagojevich, a private sector position or of any other personal benefit for the governor, according to the report.

The report said that earlier, Emanuel recommended Jarrett for the Senate seat without Obama's knowledge, and Jarrett later accepted a job as a senior White House adviser.

Craig revealed his findings into a memo to Obama. The memo was dated Tuesday, but a transition official said an initial copy was given to Obama on Dec. 15. On that day, Obama announced that the report was ready but that he was withholding it from public release for a week at the request of the U.S. attorneys still conducting their investigation.

By NEDRA PICKLER

Oil below $38 per barrel on weak economic reports

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Oil prices tumbled below $38 a barrel Tuesday on fresh evidence of weakness in the U.S. housing market and a shrinking gross domestic product that suggests the recession may be worsening.

A report by the Commerce Department showed that sales of new homes fell in November to the slowest pace in nearly 18 years, while new home prices dropped by the biggest amount in eight months.

"The energy markets are reacting first and foremost to bad economic news, and it seems like they're almost waiting for something bad to occur," said oil analyst Peter Beutel of Cameron Hanover.

A steady outpouring of gloomy economic news has pushed to the background events that over the summer may have led to price spikes, like OPEC's announcement this month of unprecedented production cuts, Beutel said.

Prices have fallen 73 percent since July, with massive job layoffs and weak consumer spending eating away at energy use.

"Boy, it really looks ugly for the start of 2009," said Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service.

"It's really difficult to find something between now and inauguration time that says people are going to feel better, they're going to drive more, they're going to ship more packages," Kloza said.

Light sweet crude for February delivery fell nearly 5 percent, or $1.89, to $38.02 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices fell as low as $37.79 earlier in the day.

Overnight, the February contract fell $2.45 to settle at $39.91 a barrel after Toyota Motor Corp. projected its first-ever operating loss since it began reporting such numbers in 1941.

Economists now believe a small decline in economic activity in the third quarter has worsened significantly.

The Commerce Department said Tuesday that the gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic health, declined at an annual rate of 0.5 percent in the July-September quarter. Corporate profits fell 1.2 percent.

Some economists believe the economy's decline in the October-December period could be as large as 6 percent. If so, that would be the worst quarterly drop since 1982.

The pain appears to have spread through almost every level of the economy. On Tuesday, shares of card maker American Greetings Corp. shares sank to their lowest level in 21 years after the company reported that it swung to a loss in its third quarter.

On Monday, Ogden, Utah-based oil company Flying J Inc. and two of its subsidiaries filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing a steep drop in oil prices and the lack of available financing due to the disruption in credit markets.

Flying J operates 250 travel plazas and fuel stations in 41 states and six Canadian provinces.

"They won't be the last marketer or refiner that may have to go the bankruptcy route in the next year or so," Kloza said. "It's been pretty rugged out there."

Toby Hassall, an analyst at investment firm Commodity Warrants Australia in Sydney, predicted crude prices could fall as low as $25 a barrel next year before any recovery occurs.

OPEC said last week it would slash production by 2.2 million barrels a day, its largest cutback ever, reducing the amount of oil produced each day by 4 million barrels in all when earlier cuts are included.

"It will take time for output cuts to flow through, but there's some doubt about whether there will be full compliance," Hassall said. "I wouldn't be surprised if OPEC cut again in January or February. There's been quite a significant demand side deterioration."

Meanwhile, Iraq's Oil Ministry announced it will open its second licensing round for developing its vast oil and gas fields. Iraq sits on more than 115 billion barrels of oil, but decades of war, U.N. sanctions, violence and sabotage have battered its oil industry.

The Iraqis are betting that oil will eventually rebound. But even if it stays low, it doesn't matter, Beutel said.

"They need the money," he said. "They can't get anywhere near the same amount of money by selling dates."

Oil's downward curve has brought down gasoline prices, providing consumers with one of the few bright spots in a deteriorating economy.

Retail gasoline prices have now fallen for the 23rd week since the July 4 weakened, reaching a national average of $1.653 a gallon as of Monday, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

"That is the lowest price at the pump in nearly five years, i.e. since February 2004," trader and analyst Stephen Schork wrote in his Schork Report.

Gasoline futures on the Nymex tumbled 5.3 cents to 83.3 cents a gallon. Heating oil fell 2.7 cents to $1.3141 a gallon while natural gas for January delivery rose nearly 17 cents to $5.462 per 1,000 cubic feet.

In London, February Brent crude tumbled more than 4 percent, or $1.73, to $39.72 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.