PICKENS — A North Car­olina teenager who has accused a for­mer top offi­cial of the Miss South Car­olina pageant of molest­ing her when she a lit­tle girl described in court Tues­day what she said was con­tin­ued abuse over the course of three years.

“He told me I couldn’t tell any­body,” the girl, now 14, tes­ti­fied of abuse alle­ga­tions dat­ing back to 2005. “Joey could get vio­lent. I was afraid he was going to do some­thing to me …”

How­ever, an attor­ney for Joseph Pet­ti­grew Sanders IV — the pageant’s for­mer vice pres­i­dent and exec­u­tive direc­tor who resigned amid the alle­ga­tions — tried to elicit tes­ti­mony from her to sug­gest she made up the story so she could move back to her home in another state.

“We live in a day and time where we are bom­barded with molesta­tion cases,” pub­lic defender John DeJong told the Pick­ens County jury pre­sid­ing over Sanders’ trial. “The fact that he was arrested is no proof what­so­ever to his inno­cence or guilt.”

Sanders is on trial on two charges, second-degree crim­i­nal sex­ual con­duct and lewd act on a minor, while at the same time another defen­dant, Anita Gearhart, faces a charge for what pros­e­cu­tors allege was fail­ing to report abuse she knew was happening.

Assis­tant Solic­i­tor Doug Richard­son told the jury that Sanders fon­dled the girl on three sep­a­rate occa­sions at an Easley motel begin­ning in 2005, which he said esca­lated to sex­ual inter­course in 2008.

“It is a crime with­out wit­nesses,” Richard­son said. “It is a crime that hap­pens behind closed doors.”

Richard­son said Gearhart knew the abuse was hap­pen­ing and did noth­ing to stop it.

Gearhart’s attor­ney, Scott Robin­son, told the jury that Gearhart is a hard-working nurse in Easley and deserves the ben­e­fit of the doubt.

On cross-examination, the girl denied that she told some­one she made the story up because, DeJong said, she “would do what­ever it would take to get back at Joey.”

The girl tes­ti­fied that she only said she lied about the abuse because she feared Sanders.

Robin­son asked the girl if she had got­ten in trou­ble for send­ing “provoca­tive” text mes­sages to her 12-year-old boyfriend, a ques­tion she never answered after Richard­son objected and stepped up to the judge’s bench to explain why he thought the ques­tion was inappropriate.

The trial for both defen­dants con­tin­ues this morning.

via greenvilleonline.com | The Greenville News.

Pac-Man cre­ator Toru Iwatani brought a rather incred­i­ble his­tor­i­cal arti­fact to the recent NLGD Fes­ti­val of Games in the Nether­lands: a note­book full of sketches from the orig­i­nal design of Pac-Man. The thirty-year-old sketches show that Iwatani had a pretty good idea of how the mazes and Pac-Man sprite would work even in the pen-and-paper stage of the game design (although, note that the drafted maze lacks the warps at either side). You can also see how casual Iwatani is about car­ry­ing around a price­less, irre­place­able doc­u­ment. (See more pic­tures at Con­trol.)

(Via Joys­tiq.)

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• Blog: Mar­vel Moves For­ward With Doc­tor Strange Movie http://gregbo.com/wordpress/286 #

It seems that the res­i­dent sor­cerer of NYC’s Green­wich Vil­lage will be the next char­ac­ter from the Mar­vel ros­ter to get the big screen treat­ment. That’s right — a movie for Doc­tor Strange is in the works! Accord­ing to Dead­line, Mar­vel Stu­dios has hired Thomas Don­nelly and Joshua Oppen­heimer, the writ­ing team behind the upcom­ing reboot of Conan (the sword-wielding Bar­bar­ian, not the NBC refugee) to pen the leg­endary mystic’s live-action debut. How­ever, with their recent $4 bil­lion acqui­si­tion of Mar­vel, this film will also appar­ently be the first that will be released under the ban­ner of Disney.

Besides being involved with a draft of Jon Favreau’s upcom­ing Cow­boys and Aliens, the writ­ing duo of Don­nelly and Oppen­heimer have also penned the screen­play to the upcom­ing film adap­ta­tion of Uncharted: Drake’s For­tune. (They wrote a video game movie? …Oh, boy.) At this point, details are scarce. How­ever, it is worth not­ing that Doc­tor Strange’s name did come up in the recent news regard­ing Mar­vel poten­tially look­ing to release a series of short films star­ing some of its lesser-known char­ac­ters. The release under the Dis­ney ban­ner is actu­ally a given, con­sid­er­ing that Mar­vel Stu­dios’ dis­tri­b­u­tion part­ner­ship with Para­mount is down to four more films before Dis­ney would then take the helm. It is assumed that those four will be Thor, Cap­tain Amer­ica: The First Avenger, The Avengers, and finally Iron Man 3. While other Mar­vel prop­er­ties like Run­aways and Ant-Man remain on the back-burner, it will be inter­est­ing to see how films after the Para­mount deal will take shape. If the rumor about the short films holds true, then per­haps the chang­ing of the release strat­egy of some of these lesser-known Mar­vel comic films may coin­cide with Dis­ney tak­ing the helm of distribution.

As far as the pos­si­bil­i­ties for Doc­tor Strange as a movie, it could have the poten­tial to be the most unique comic book film ever. Once a promi­nent and some­what arro­gant sur­geon, Stephen Strange’s med­ical career ended with a dev­as­tat­ing car acci­dent that deprived him of his abil­i­ties. Filled with guilt over the plethora of per­sonal tragedies of in his life, he trav­eled to the Far East seek­ing to learn of mys­tic pow­ers to fix every­thing that was wrong in his life. Instead, he found his call­ing and was trained to be a mys­tic hero defend­ing Earth against evil invaders from another dimen­sion. He’s been a fix­ture in the Mar­vel Uni­verse ever since.

Strange has the poten­tial to be an excel­lent film, as long as the com­plex­ity of his char­ac­ter is retained. The orig­i­nal comic released in the early 60’s was clearly influ­enced from youth subculture’s preva­lent inter­est at the time in psy­che­delia and East­ern Mys­ti­cism. The idea of the Mar­vel staff being high on mush­rooms while pro­duc­ing the series was a long-running rumor. (Which was denied emphat­i­cally.) The film, there­fore, must con­tain the quirk­i­ness that embod­ied the comics, while cast­ing a lead who can express the grouch­i­ness and reluc­tance to hero­ism shown in Strange’s jour­ney towards his des­tiny. In other words, he has to be kind of a pompous and sar­cas­tic douche, yet be one that at the same time main­tains a cer­tain swag­ger and lik­a­bil­ity. If you ask me, House’s Hugh Lau­rie is tailor-made for that role. But, of course, we’ll see.

What’s your take on Doc­tor Strange? Can it work on the big screen? Is it too weird for aver­age moviegoers?

(Via G4 TV — The­Feed.)