Recommended Reading
from Bruce
President Obama: Executive Order -- Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel
Section 1. Ethics Pledge. Every appointee in every executive agency appointed on or after January 20, 2009, shall sign, and upon signing shall be contractually committed to, the following pledge upon becoming an appointee: "As a condition, and in consideration, of my employment in the United States Government in a position invested with the public trust, I commit myself to the following obligations, which I understand are binding on me and are enforceable under law: "1. Lobbyist Gift Ban. I will not accept gifts from registered lobbyists or lobbying organizations for the duration of my service as an appointee. ...
Garrison Keillor: Appreciation for a great appreciator
Ten a.m. A phone call from my daughter's school, and instantly the father's mind goes to Dark Foreboding, but no-this is her teacher calling to say that the child scored 96 on the spelling test. The child's instant reward is the phone call home and the words of praise. She sits at her desk pretending not to listen, basking in the acclaim. Well-done.
Lara Killian: Newbery Medal goes to Gaiman (popmatters.com)
The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA) has announced the 2009 winner of the prestigious Newbery Medal book award. Neil Gaiman's touted volume for children, The Graveyard Book has taken the award this year, much to the author's surprise.
Bill Lambrecht: In new book, Jimmy Carter is upbeat about peace talks in Mideast (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
Q: In another of your books, "An Hour Before Daylight," you wrote about your Depression-era boyhood. Are the comparisons to the Depression era we're hearing warranted?
Carter: Nobody should equate the two. In the Great Depression in which I grew up and remember vividly, unemployment was over 25 percent, and over 35 percent where I lived. A grown man would work all day, 16 hours, for a dollar. I remember hundreds of people walking by, people who had come down from the North just to get warm. They would come to our house as beggars even though they might have a college education. People didn't have money. They bartered; they'd trade eggs or pigs. It was just completely different.
Rachel Leibrock: For Daniel Handler, Snicket lives - as do music and flying saucers (McClatchy Newspapers)
After 13 installments, Daniel Handler's wildly popular "A Series of Unfortunate Events" saga came to an end in 2006, but the books' narrator, Lemony Snicket, lives on. In fact, Handler presents a new story, "Why Does Lemony Snicket Keep Following Me?" this week at the Crest Theatre in Sacramento.
Mike Farley: A Chat with Butch Walker, Singer/Songwriter (bullz-eye.com)
It's no different than Snoop Dog or Death Cab for Cutie getting asked to do a corporate gig for IBM or something like that, to play to 13 people in suits and ties for 13 grand. So I sort of do the same thing in my day job.
Jim Abbott: Buddy Guy colors his legacy in blues (The Orlando Sentinel)
Looking forward to watching B.B. King on his current concert tour?
So is the other guy on the bill.
Claire Sawers: More than just another funny face (timesonline.co.uk)
A retrospective shows Audrey Hepburn had more range than is often credited to her.
Neal Justin: Laurence Fishburne puts his fingerprints on America's most popular TV drama (Star Tribune)
During a press conference last month on the sprawling set of "CSI," a journalist with obviously little regard for his own well-being asked Laurence Fishburne if he was intimidated by the notion of joining TV's top-rated drama.
20 QUESTIONS: Max & Jason (popmatters.com)
Al 'Gore's Boys' and Current TV producers and hosts Max Lugavere and Jason Silva chat with PopMatters 20 Questions about enthusiasm-inducing people and things.
The Weekly Poll
New Question
The 'Stimulate me... Please!' Edition
Are there any aspects of the pending 'Stimulus Bill' that you find to be inadequate or inappropriate?
Send your response, and a (short) reason why, to
noted:
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Winter returned! Gray day with lots of rain.
Defends Wildlife
Ashley Judd
An animal rights group is getting help from actress Ashley Judd in its campaign to try to stop Alaska's practice of killing wolves and bears from airplanes.
Judd appears in a new Internet video for Defenders of Wildlife, and targets not only the state's predator control program but also one of the program's chief supporters, Gov. Sarah Palin.
"It's time to stop Sarah Palin and stop this senseless savagery," Judd says in the video posted on a Web site operated by the political arm of the group, Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund.
It's not the first time Defenders of Wildlife has targeted Palin. Last fall, when Palin was John McCain's running mate, it ran ads in several states denouncing Palin and the predator control program, and raised more than $1 million. Judd had campaigned for President Barack Obama during the campaign.
Ashley Judd
The List Grows
Madoff Investors
Larry King and John Malkovich were among the thousands of names listed as clients who invested with Bernard Madoff.
The list was made public Wednesday in a court filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. It supplied a handful of bold-faced names that further evidenced the reach into the entertainment world of Madoff's alleged Ponzi scheme.
Kevin Bacon and his wife Kyra Sedgwick earlier acknowledged they had investments with Madoff, though they were not on the list. A lawyer for Zsa Zsa Gabor has said the 91-year-old actress may have lost as much as $10 million invested in the alleged Madoff pyramid scheme. She also was not on the list.
The 162-page list also included Steven Spielberg's Wunderkinder Foundation and organizations for the late singer-songwriter John Denver.
The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, a foundation named for the Jewish writer and activist, was also listed. The foundation earlier announced that it had $15.2 million - nearly all of its assets - under management with Madoff's firm.
Madoff Investors
Analog Til June
DTV Delay
The major U.S. television networks CBS Corp, General Electric Co's NBC and Walt Disney Co's ABC will continue to transmit TV signals in analog, as a nationwide switch to digital signals is delayed, a top government official said on Thursday.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Copps thanked the broadcasters at a public meeting on the nation's preparedness for the transition to digital, a congressionally mandated switch to free up spectrum for public safety and provide better television viewing.
On Wednesday the U.S. House of Representatives voted to delay the change by four months -- to June 12 from February 17. The Senate voted to approve the delay last month. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill into law shortly.
Backers of the delay are worried that 20 million mostly poor, elderly and rural households were not prepared due to a shortage of government coupons meant to defray the cost of converter boxes.
DTV Delay
"You're Welcome America. A Final Night With George W. Bush"
Will Ferrell
Already feeling masochistically nostalgic for the misadventures of the previous presidential administration?
You can relive those eight years - and more - in "You're Welcome America. A Final Night With George W. Bush," Will Ferrell's merciless and often blisteringly funny raunch roast of the former chief executive who left the Oval Office less than three weeks ago.
Ferrell wrote and stars as Bush in this 90-minute satiric biography, which opened Thursday at the Cort Theatre. The actor, a former "Saturday Night Live" regular and now a full-fledged movie star, seems totally at ease on a big Broadway stage.
"You're Welcome America" is not exactly a one-man show. There are several other performers including a breakdancing Secret Service agent, played by Ferrell's brother, Patrick, who, weirdly enough, is a John Belushi lookalike. Then there's a sexy Condoleezza Rice, portrayed by Pia Glenn who delivers what can only be described as a pole dance (without the pole) worthy of any high-priced "gentlemen's club."
Will Ferrell
Family Gets Break
'Extreme Makeover'
A renegotiated mortgage will give a Michigan family a better chance of staying in their home, which was refurbished on TV's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."
The ABC show redid Judy and Larry Vardon's Oak Park home in 2004 to better accommodate their blind, autistic son. But as 16-year-old Lance's bills kept piling up, the Vardons refinanced the house with an adjustable-rate mortgage and got into financial trouble.
Now, the Detroit News says, a mortgage broker negotiated new terms modifying the Vardons' loan this week. They still owe $180,000.
The couple, who are deaf, had fallen in arrears after their monthly payments ballooned from $1,471 to $2,250. They were facing foreclosure when media reports about their plight led to donations exceeding $30,000.
'Extreme Makeover'
Biggest Quarterly Loss
News Corp
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp posted its biggest ever quarterly net loss, after taking an $8.4 billion writedown for the value of its Dow Jones acquisition, broadcasting licenses and other assets.
Excluding the charge, the results missed Wall Street forecasts as the recession exacerbated the fall in newspaper advertising sales and hit the company's other properties.
News Corp shares fell 6.3 percent to $6.50 in after-hours trading and have shed about 65 percent of their value in the past 12 months.
One bright spot was cable network, whose operating profit rose 27 percent to $428 million on strength at the Fox News Channel, the Big Ten Network and Fox International Channels.
News Corp
AP Alleges Copyright Infringement
Shepard Fairey
On buttons, posters and Web sites, the image was everywhere during last year's presidential campaign: A pensive Barack Obama looking upward, as if to the future, splashed in a Warholesque red, white and blue and underlined with the caption HOPE.
Designed by Shepard Fairey, a Los-Angeles based street artist, the image has led to sales of hundreds of thousands of posters and stickers, has become so much in demand that copies signed by Fairey have been purchased for thousands of dollars on eBay.
The image, Fairey has acknowledged, is based on an Associated Press photograph, taken in April 2006 by Manny Garcia on assignment for the AP at the National Press Club in Washington.
The AP says it owns the copyright, and wants credit and compensation. Fairey disagrees.
Shepard Fairey
Disney Tarts Up Ride
'Small World'
More than 40 years after the "It's A Small World" ride opened to promote world peace and showcase the cultures of the world, Disney is populating one of its most beloved attractions with its own trademark vision of the planet: Aladdin, Nemo, Ariel and more than two dozen cartoon characters plucked from its movies.
And those aren't the only changes visitors will find Thursday when the ride reopens: Disney has woven a few bars from some of its hit soundtracks into the classic "Small World" melody and added a new America section that includes a nod to Los Angeles' famous Hollywood Bowl, a quaint farm scene and "Toy Story" characters.
Disney says it supplemented the human dolls with make-believe figures to keep the aging ride appealing to younger generations and give it a new twist. Yet some angry fans see an unabashed marketing ploy that trashes the pacifist message at the heart of the "Happiest Cruise That Ever Sailed the World" and ruins one of the few rides that remained unchanged since the days of Walt Disney.
"What message are they actually saying about the world?" said Jerry Beck, an animation historian who runs the blog Cartoon Brew. "That you can go anywhere and there will be a Disney theme park?"
The "Small World" ride debuted at the 1964 World's Fair in New York as a benefit to the United Nations Children's Fund, and moved to Disneyland two years later. When Walt Disney dedicated the ride in 1966, he invited children from around the world to pour water from their homelands into its flume in a gesture of unity.
'Small World'
Army Reports Alarming Rise
Suicides
The Army is investigating a stunning number of suicides in January - a count that could surpass all combat deaths on America's two warfronts last month.
According to figures obtained by The Associated Press, there were 24 suspected suicides in January, compared to five in January of 2008, six in January of 2007 and 10 in January of 2006.
The service has rarely, if ever, released a month-by-month update on suicides, but officials said Thursday that they wanted to re-emphasize "the urgency and seriousness necessary for preventive action at all levels" of the force.
The big monthly count follows an annual report last week showing that soldiers killed themselves at the highest rate on record in 2008. The toll for all of last year - 128 confirmed and 15 pending investigation - was an increase for the fourth straight year and even surpassed the suicide rate among civilians.
Suicides
Downtown San Diego
Mammoth
Workers digging at a downtown San Diego construction site have uncovered the prehistoric remains of an 8-foot-long mammoth.
A backhoe operator working at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law site unearthed a 20-foot-long tusk Wednesday.
School spokesman Chris Saunders says experts called in from the San Diego Natural History Museum uncovered the animal's skull and other bones.
Museum paleontologist Pat Sena says it's a "pretty important find" and that it's rare to find mammoth remains with such an intact skull, foot bones and tusk.
Mammoth
In Memory
Lux Interior
Lux Interior, co-founder and lead singer of the pioneering horror-punk band the Cramps, has died, the group's publicist said. He was 60.
Interior - whose real name was Erick Lee Purkhiser - died Wednesday of a pre-existing heart condition at a hospital in Glendale, Calif., publicist Aleix Martinez said in a statement.
Interior met his future wife Kristy Wallace - who would later take the stage name Poison Ivy - in Sacramento in 1972.
The pair moved to New York and started the Cramps with Interior on lead vocals and Ivy on guitar. The group was a part of the late `70s early punk scene centered at Manhattan clubs like CBGB, alongside acts like the Ramones and Patti Smith.
Their unmistakable sound was a lo-fi synthesis of rockabilly and surf guitar staged with a deviant dose of midnight-movie camp. Some called it "psychobilly."
The pale, tall, gaunt Interior appeared shirtless with black hair and tiny, low-slung black pants, looking part zombie, part Elvis Presley as he crawled, writhed and howled his way across the stage.
The group had the raw intensity of punk, but took the music in new directions by incorporating theatrical elements, often horror-themed, in songs like "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" and "Bikini Girls With Machine Guns." Their breakthrough debut EP was 1979's "Gravest Hits."
The band made a notorious appearance at a California mental institution, Napa State Hospital, in 1978. The performance, whose video is still popular on YouTube, was a punk-era echo of the Folsom Prison concert of Johnny Cash, one of the band's influences.
The Cramps' lineup changed often through the decades but Interior and Ivy remained the center. Their bluesy, trebly sound - the group didn't have a bass guitarist - resonates in modern minimalist groups like the White Stripes and the Black Lips.
Lux Interior
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