Season of Giving

And… with the generous support of his fans, 57-year-old stand-up Mike MacDonald looks to have the best possible chance of overcoming his condition.

Per a local CBC-TV report, MacDonald is in need of a liver transplant after coming down with the disease last year in Los Angeles. He is not specifically clear on how he got it, but tells the reporter it could be linked to a SoCal lifestyle that was once drug-fueled.

The comedian’s friend Brittany Anastacio launched an online donation campaign to help pay for the transplant, and in just the first three days, nearly $15,000 Canadian has already been raised. Per the CBC report:

MacDonald moved back to his hometown of Ottawa last summer and is unable to work. He said he is speechless with all the donations to his cause. “It’s restored my faith in humanity. This whole thing has been very humbling,” he said

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Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

Alexia Tsotsis, full-time TechCruch editor and part-time fashionista, is parting with a chunk of her wardrobe to benefit the nonprofit Charity:Water. In partnership with online consignment shop Threadflip, Tsotsis is offering up fashionable finds ranging from a J. Crew sweater (pictured at right) to a studded pair of Miu Miu heels.

The clothing sale is part of a larger effort by Tsotsis to raise $10,000 for Charity:Water. Tsotsis dedicated her 30th birthday to the cause, encouraging donations in lieu of gifts.

Charity:Water is an organization dedicated to bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Unsafe water kills approximately 30,000 people every week, mostly children, so it’s easy to see why Tsotsis was eager to get involved. 100% of donations to Charity:Water go directly to funding safe water projects, a refreshing alternative to the many charities who blow a significant portion of donations on “operating costs.”

And if Tsotsis looks familiar, it’s because she used to be a local. She served as LA Weekly’s Internet culture reporter in 2008 and 2009. She now resides in San Francisco.

Sad news from Reddit headquarters in San Francisco. Newly hired community manager David A. Croach has been diagnosed with Leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant to give him the best chance of surviving. Chemotherapy alone doesn’t seem to be doing it. Unfortunately, as of yet, Croach does not have a matching donor. Reddit is trying to fix that.

A bone marrow transplant’s success relies heavily on the host’s and donor’s immune markers being similar enough that the new bone marrow doesn’t attack its host. This is where we all come in: there hasn’t yet been a good enough match for DAC’s transplant, so we need to get as many people screened as possible to find a good match. In the process, you can register to be on the national bone marrow registry to potentially help out others in this situation. Don’t worry, donation is painless these days.

More info here if you want to be screened to help save a fellow media-ite’s life.

In LA, there are each year a number of intriguing celebrity-tinged stories involving fundraising campaigns for local schools. A FishbowlLA favorite was the time Johnny Depp passed on a personal piece of artwork to the Little Red School House in Hollywood.

James Figueroa, a reporter for the Pasadena Star-News, has shared the latest such tale. One that makes extra good sense when you consider the benevolent A-lister’s recent film credit and the fact that this particular film was shot at the very place where an urban garden was dedicated Wednesday:

Actress Cameron Diaz–who filmed Bad Teacher on Altadena’s Eliot Middle School campus during spring break in 2010–the Environmental Media Association and Sony Pictures helped fund the project with a $10,000 donation. Diaz was unavailable for the ceremony, but EMA board member and actor Mehcad Brooks, known primarily for a supporting role on HBO’s vampire saga True Blood, was on hand.

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With his most recent film The Artist racking up 10 Oscar nominations, doggie actor Uggie is calling it a career.

According to his IMBb page (yes, he has an IMDb page) Uggie has two film credits to his name: The Artist and Water for Elephants. But according to his Wikipedia page (oh yeah, he has one of those too–and it’s pretty extensive) Uggie has been in six movies–including Larry Clark‘s Wassup Rockers. Of course how could anyone forget his performance as a beautiful, shirtless, bi-sexual ingenue, exposed to the drugs, sex and violence of the underground LA punk scene.

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Today in Van Nuys, students at the Daniel Pearl Magnet High School will gather to watch Charles Evans Jr.‘s documentary Addiction Incorporated, all about the tobacco industry’s original whistleblower Victor DeNoble. Evans will be in attendance for a Q&A with former LA Times reporter Myron Levin and lunch with members of school newspaper The Pearl Post.

Evans will also be applauded for his private donation of $15,000 to the school. As first reported by Levin’s former employer and expanded upon this morning by KPCC, the money has already been earmarked:

It’ll go to create a much-needed broadcast news class, 11th-grader Ellie Batchiyska, editor of the campus newspaper, told KPCC. “Our journalism program has been underfunded for a while now,” Batchiyska said, “and journalism is the main component of our school, so I think it should be one of our top priorities, and when I heard this I couldn’t help but imagine all opportunities we’d get.”

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This Santa has a rap video, a beard insured by Lloyds of London and a long list of Hollywood celebrity clients. The story of Brady White–a.k.a. “Santa to the Stars©” (pictured)–never gets old and thus is part of a look at seven different North Pole specialists by CNN religion reporter Jessica Ravitz.

White has copyrighted the term “Santa to the Stars” and generally insists that journalists and others make sure to append all print mentions with a ©. It’s a long way from where this guy found himself in the 1970s:

White first entered the Santa game about three decades ago out of desperation. He was an unemployed actor in Los Angeles and nine months behind in his rent when he took a job as a mall Santa in Beverly Hills. That season the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner polled children to find the best Santa around. Guess who won?…

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There may be no better way to get into the Christmas spirit this year than to purchase a digital copy of the theological thriller Cloning Christ by Peter Thomas Senese.

Not only does the story crucially involve Jesus Christ, or at least the DNA-laden cross upon which he was crucified. But for the e-book version, which has just been released, author Senese is promising to donate all profits to the International Child Abduction Research and Enlightenment Foundation (a.k.a. I C.A.R.E).

On his personal website, Senese explains the genesis for Cloning Christ:

The book was conceptualized during the time I spent at New York’s ‘Ground Zero.’ During one particular night, I lost my faith in God and did not understand how HE could and would allow for such a disaster to occur. While spending the evening inside the Trinity Church, essentially speaking my anger-filled mind at God, I soon realized that HE did not abandon us. And so, at sometime in the middle of the night and into the early part of the morning, I wrote a very detailed outline and synopsis of Cloning Christ.

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Greetings loyal Fishbowl readers. It’s holiday time, and we’re feeling the Hanukkah spirit. So all you fans of Chelsea Lately (or of comedy in general) listen up. We have five pairs of tickets to giveaway to see The Comedians of Chelsea Lately perform at Club Nokia on December 16. Ross Mathews, Heather McDonald, Josh Wolf and Jen Kirkman will all be performing.

First five people to email us will get tickets. The show starts at 9. More info here.

*Three of our winners have since told us they can’t make the show. So keep emailing if you’re interested. We have three pairs of tickets left.

Legal mumbo jumbo after the jump.

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It’s not often I’ll plug a local promotion, but this one is too good to pass up.

If you “Like” ABC7 on Facebook, $1 will be donated to the Spark of Love Toy Drive, which collects new, unwrapped toys for underserved children in Los Angeles.

Spark of Love collected over 500,00 toys last year for the holidays.

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