AFTER A BUSY THREE DAYS that featured the NBA Playoffs, Major League Baseball, and PGA Tour (although Tiger-less) golf, Express' Matt Swenson and Ian Herbert discuss the weekend that was in the sports world.

Welcome to May 12th! On this date 5 years ago, 59 Democratic lawmakers brought the Texas legislature to a standstill by going into hiding after a Republican congressional gerrymandering plan, according to Wikipedia.

Future News Prediction: In order to raise money for his legal defense, Josef Fritzl files a copyright infringement suit against Wes Craven for his "unauthorized adaption" of Fritzl's life: "The People Under The Stairs."

Here is your Monday Top 5:

5) Size Matters
Inflating the oft-maligned grade, "F", Sheyla Hershey of Houston has, through a series of implants, developed the world's largest breasts (an astounding cup size FFF). The 28-year-old mother, who now boasts a whopping two quarts of silicone per breast, has undergone eight surgeries in order to rack up a win in Brazil's version of The Guinness Book of World Records. "Everybody's got a dream inside, you know?" Hershey was quoted as saying. "And, it's good when you can make your dream come true." But like all great champions, Hershey isn't resting on her mammaries, despite doctor warnings about scar tissue and back pain. She now wants to grow her assets to an even greater level. And although Texas law reportedly draws the line at "1,000 cubic centimeters of silicone in each breast," who's to say how far this dedicated housewife will go to stretch the bounds of brassieres and social convention in pursuit of her goals?

4) Money Marinade
Get-rich-quick schemes come a dime a dozen, but they seldom involve gravy. Except perhaps in Norway, where a Vietnamese national reportedly lost $35,000 after he was told to mix the cash with a "special liquid" that would double its value. He was allegedly duped by a 32-year-old Frenchman, who told him to leave the loot in a fake bill slurry. He returned to find both his money and the perpetrator missing. The suspect's lawyer was quoted as saying that his client was "extremely surprised to be charged with something that is so incredible. This sounds completely crazy."

3) Paging the Darwin Awards
An Iowa man was reportedly hit by a train as he attempted to lay a dime on the tracks. Robert Wrisberg, 47, of Davenport was knocked unconscious when a ladder on a rail car near the end of the train hit his head. Wrisberg's nephew, Kyle Ostrander, who said the two were "drinking" and "just messing around," telephoned 911. TV station WQAD quoted Ostrander as describing the duo's coin-flattening strategy this way: "Just wait, right after wheel goes over stick it on there flattens it and grab it real quick, it looks cool. Coin looks cool when it flattens out [sic]."

2) Russian School Rave
A batch of Russian students reportedly "stripped off, climbed walls or lay on the floor laughing after their school dinners were spiked with drugs." Teachers say that the students, aged 13 to 15, turned their school in the eastern city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, into "a lunatic asylum" after consuming a lunch laced with Ecstasy. Experts investigating the meals say that water in the soup students ate most likely contained traces of opiates and amphetamines. No word on whether glow sticks and pacifiers were incorporated.

1) DIY Doc
Let's face it, health-care these days ain't cheap — but thank goodness for American ingenuity! Take, for example, Steve Wilder of Omaha, Nebraska, who has performed not one, but two tracheotomies on himself with a steak knife. The 55-year-old homeschooled surgeon says "I didn't feel no pain. I was just trying to survive," in a reportedly high-pitched, gravelly voice. Wilder, a cancer survivor, had felt that he was suffocating, and rather than waiting for an ambulance, cut a quarter-inch incision into his own throat. "I knew that would chop it open pretty good," he was quoted as saying, adding "I told [my doctor] we should split the bill." Wilder apparently performed a similar operation on himself in 2006 "under similar circumstances."

And for dessert, here is your Moment of Schadenfreude:

YOU MIGHT NOT REMEMBER your first grade teacher's name, where you sat at lunch or how you did in that first kickball game, but chances are you know exactly how each situation made you feel.

"Junie B. Jones" a musical based on the popular children's books by Barbara Park, seeks to funnel those first-grade emotions into a brisk musical aimed at children, but sophisticated enough for adults.

The play, which runs a scant 60 minutes, is based on four books in the series: "Junie B., First Grader (at Last!)," "Junie B., Boss of Lunch," "Junie B., One-Man Band" and "Top-Secret, Personal Beeswax Journal."

The traveling musical, produced by Theatreworks USA, stops at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium on May 12 at 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.

The show's director, Nandita Shenoy, is involved in her 10th tour of the show. She originally started out as the show's choreographer, but when she stepped in as director Shenoy didn't try to change much about the already well-established production.

"The show that was created is really just a fantastic show, so I feel that my job is to re-create the original as opposed to something new," she said. "My challenge is to get honest and truthful performances out of new actors each time."

Continue Reading "Musical Stages: 'Junie B. Jones'" »

EX-TALKING HEADS FRONTMAN DAVID BYRNE plans to turn a landmark building in Manhattan into a giant musical instrument.

State officials say Byrne will create a temporary installation in the Great Hall of the Battery Maritime Building, which is next to the Whitehall Ferry Terminal.

The "Playing the Building" installation will include devices attached to ceiling beams, plumbing, electrical conduits and other parts of the structure. Sound will be produced through vibration, making the building function as an instrument.

Continue Reading "David Byrne Plans to Make NYC Building into Instrument" »

PAUL MCCARTNEY IS WEEKS AWAY from becoming the last of The Beatles to be divorced.

Justice Hugh Bennett on Monday granted a preliminary divorce decree for McCartney and Heather Mills. The decree could become final in six weeks and one day if no one objects.

McCartney and Mills were not in court for the brief proceeding.

Mills, 40, emerges from the rancorous divorce with a settlement of 24.3 million pounds — $47.5 million — and her reputation damaged by her ferocious televised outbursts against McCartney, 65.

Continue Reading "Paul McCartney, Heather Mills Granted Preliminary Divorce" »

"STRANGE TIMES ARE HERE" proclaims The Black Keys' singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach over a synthesized howl on the first single from the band's, well, strangest album yet, "Attack & Release."

That howl, along with flutes, organs and more synthesizers is the result of The Black Keys' first attempt at recording an album in a real studio, with a real producer.

But the producer isn't exactly who you'd expect a drum-and-guitar blues duo to partner up with. Until now, Danger Mouse, aka Brian Burton, was most famous as the brains behind the Jay-Z and Beatles mash-up "The Grey Album" and the producer half of Gnarls Barkley.

The Black Keys — Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney — first worked with Burton on sessions for a new Ike Turner record he was producing.

"Brian gave us a call just out of the blue; we'd never met him before," Auerbach said. "He said, 'I'm friends with Ike and I want to make a record really raw and stripped down.'"

Continue Reading "A New 'Attack': The Black Keys" »

MARY TILLMAN'S BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN new book, "Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman," is a both a moving portrait of her son's tragically short life and an indictment of a military and government that misinformed her about the cause of the Army Ranger's death.

"Boots on the Ground" shifts between touching vignettes about Pat's youth and rise to fame as an NFL football player to sad accounts on how his family struggled with grief and with a bureaucracy seemingly determined to obscure how and why Pat Tillman died.

In the wake of September 11, Tillman signed up for the military with his brother Kevin, a minor-league baseball player. After Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004, his family and the public were told that he'd been shot while heroically battling the enemy.

About a month later, the truth emerged: He was shot by another Ranger.

In his mother's account, the family is told so many different stories about how Pat died that it becomes impossible to determine what happened that day. In the end, Mary believes "Pat was killed in a senseless act by soldiers who were wildly and inexplicably out of control."

But she leaves open the possibility that he was murdered. The one thing clear to Mary Tillman is that the American army and government intentionally misled the American public.

"Pat's death was not thoroughly investigated," Tillman said. "I think it was prompted by the [Bush] Administration — they were prompted to cover it up, because the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was breaking that week. Things were falling apart in Fallujah. The most casualties of the war [occurred] in April 2004. They wanted Pat's death to deflect attention from those things and the only way they could do that was to turn it into this grandiose narrative.

"They never really found out what Pat did out there," Mary continued. "They made up a story before they found out what his actions were. His uniform was destroyed, his equipment was destroyed — it was not sent back to show to the medical examiner. All these things are acts of disrespect. I don't think any soldier believes that will happen. They know there is a possibility of death, being wounded — but they don't expect the government to disrespect their service."

Tillman will further discuss her book and her son via a live chat on WashingtonPost.com at noon on May 12 and in a reading that evening at Olsson's-Penn Quarter.

Continue Reading "Blanket Cover-Up: Mary Tillman" »

"WHY WOULD AN educated Midwestern white girl think that when she got her college degree, the best job out there was forming a band?"

Soon after Laurie Lindeen asked herself this question, she ended up with a novel.

"Petal Pushers: A Rock 'n' Roll Cinderella Story" is Lindeen's memoir of growing up in Madison, Wisc., and eventually marrying Replacements singer Paul Westerberg and starting a family. In between, Lindeen tells of moving to Minneapolis and touring the country as frontwoman for the all-female punk trio Zuzu's Petals.

But for all the fun she had with her band, "I was never a rock star."

And Lindeen cautioned, "I didn't write a tell-all — I wrote a memoir. It's not just the beginning and end of my band. ... It's a book about fronting an all-women indie rock band, but it's also about growing up Midwestern, it's about how women learn to deal with their bodies, it's about women in music and it's a lot about my relationship with my father."

Of course, her relationship with one of alt-rock's idols plays no small role in "Petal Pushers," either.

Continue Reading "Pleased to Meet Me: Laurie Lindeen" »

FINDING A NEW perfume can be intimidating at best and nauseating at worst. But Sephora's new Scentsa Fragrance Finder (Tysons Corner Center and Georgetown stores) makes it that much easier to avoid sensory overload.

Its new touch-pad screens provide easily accessible information on anything you could ever imagine about perfume.

Written by Express contributor Danielle Parnass

LET'S BE HONEST. You already own mascara. Sure, you always want more, but you want new mascara if it does something spectacular to your lashes. Physicians Formula Plump Potion ($9, drugstores) claims to have a "7x plumping effect." Never mind that lashes actually cannot be "plumped."

The bottle resembles a test tube, but don't let that fool you into thinking that you'll get your regular lashes, multiplied by exactly seven. You'll get thicker Pat Benatar-like lashes, yes, exactly like every other mascara. This one is rather clump-free, but the brush is bulky and awkward. Life is full of trade-offs. Don't forget that.