Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Froma Harrop: Comforting Words for Young Workers (Creators Syndicate)
Financially stressed young workers have been likened to their grandparents or great-grandparents, whose expectations fell and optimism dimmed in the Great Depression. That is not an entirely bad thing. The young people scarred by the economic calamity of the 1930s developed habits of thrift and caution that served them quite well in the post-World War II recovery - unlike much of the baby boom generation.
Connie Schultz: Resist the Chardon Killer's Taunts (Creators Syndicate)
On Tuesday, a year after he murdered three Chardon High School students and injured three others, 18-year-old T.J. Lane walked into his sentencing hearing and made it virtually impossible for most of us to summon even a shred of sympathy for his condemned soul.
Susan Estrich: Radical Survivor (Creators Syndicate)
It was September 1995 when my friend and colleague Rob Saltzman told me what had happened to his sister's family. Tennis nuts. Her husband and their two boys died in a small plane crash on the way home from watching a tennis tournament. Did I mention that she had fought back breast cancer? That she was the principal at the elementary school both of her boys had attended?
The 2002 Advertisement Which Warned Against Invading Iraq (Disinformation)
Via Bear Left!, six months before the start of the Iraq War, the New York Times op-ed page featured an advertisement containing a statement signed by 33 leading scholars of international relations from universities across the United States. Dismissed at the time by mainstream pundits, today their points read as prediction of everything that was to come in Iraq: …
Mark Morford: A Republican Discovers His Heart (SF Gate)
I hereby applaud anyone's awakening. I champion anyone's arrival to a new and improved state of awareness, a more compassionate way of being resulting (most frequently) from the unexpected release of some ugly, false conviction that only served to keep you angry and cramped and Republican and very much on the wrong side of history.
Richard Wolf: Gay rights pioneers revel in progress of gay marriage (USA Today)
They are in their mid-60s now - about the average age of a Supreme Court justice. But in 1969, at a seedy Greenwich Village bar called the Stonewall Inn, they were rebellious gays and lesbians who lit a fuse that has burned ever since - and is about to reach the nation's highest court. Then, it was a battle for basic human dignity - the right to gather in public without being harassed. Today, it's a battle for perhaps the last major right still denied: marriage.
10 Reasons to Oppose Marriage Equality
Satire.
MinusIQ | The pill to lower your IQ permanently (YouTube)
The world's a much brighter place when you're not too bright for it.
Forward (YouTube)
"Forward is a strange name for a video that runs backwards. Israeli artist Messe Kopp walked down a city street doing this and that and made a weird spectacle of himself. The kicker is that he was walking backwards the entire time." - Neatorama
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Bosko Suggests
Forests
Have a great weekend,
Bosko.
Thanks, Bosko!
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Stubborn marine layer.
National Recording Registry
Library of Congress
Simon and Garfunkel's song "Sounds of Silence," which was written amid the turmoil following President John F. Kennedy's assassination, will join Chubby Checker's 1960s dance hit "The Twist" as two of 25 recordings selected for preservation at the Library of Congress.
These are just a few sounds of the 20th century being added to the National Recording Registry on Thursday for long-term preservation due to their cultural, artistic and historic importance. The library said Checker's rendition of "The Twist" became a symbol for the energy and excitement of the early 60s after "American Bandstand" host Dick Clark chose Checker to record a new version of the song.
Other selections included the original 1949 cast album for "South Pacific" and the soundtrack to the popular 1977 movie "Saturday Night Fever," starring John Travolta and featuring the Bee Gees, which revived the disco craze.
The selections span from 1918 to 1980 and represent nearly every musical and recording category.
Recordings by Will Rogers, Jimmie Davis and President Dwight D. Eisenhower capture part of the political climate of their eras. In 1931, Rogers' radio broadcast at a low point in the Great Depression included a folksy chat with President Herbert Hoover to kick off a nationwide unemployment relief campaign. Davis' 1940 recording of "You Are My Sunshine" became his election campaign theme song while running for governor of Louisiana. It became one of the most popular country songs of all time and the state song of Louisiana in 1977.
Library of Congress
Up For Auction
VOX Guitar
An electric guitar played by John Lennon and George Harrison at the height of the Beatles' fame is expected to fetch between $200,000 and $300,000 at auction in May, Julien's Auctions said on Thursday.
The VOX custom-built guitar, the centerpiece of a "Music Icons" auction, was played by the two late pop stars during the British band's "Magical Mystery Tour" period.
Harrison used it to practice the 1967 song "I Am the Walrus," while Lennon played the guitar the same year while recording a video session for "Hello, Goodbye." Both songs were included on the "Magical Mystery Tour" album.
Beverly Hills-based Julien's Auctions said the guitar was given as a gift in 1967 to Yanni "Magic Alex" Mardas, the electronics engineer for the band's Apple Records label.
VOX Guitar
Victoria & Albert Museum
David Bowie
When did the modern era begin? With the Renaissance? With Elvis Presley?
For a generation of music-loving Britons, it started on July 6, 1972, when David Bowie performed the song "Starman" on the TV show "Top of the Pops."
Viewers had never seen anything like the androgynous orange-haired figure in a jumpsuit, singing about aliens while draping his arm teasingly around guitarist Mick Ronson and offering a lyrical benediction - "let all the children boogie."
The ripples from that moment help explain why a major new multimedia exhibition about Bowie at London's Victoria and Albert Museum is the fastest seller in the institution's history, with 50,000 advance tickets sold - and why Bowie is topping music charts once again at the age of 66.
The "David Bowie Is" exhibition, which opens Saturday, marks the first time Britain's leading museum of decorative arts and design has devoted a show to a pop star.
David Bowie
Urges NYC To Preserve Bowery
Martin Scorsese
Famed director Martin Scorsese wants New York's mean streets to keep some of their grittiness.
The "Gangs of New York" director has joined an effort to curb redevelopment of the Bowery. That's the former skid row near where Scorsese grew up.
Scorsese wrote to New York City Planning Commission Chairwoman Amanda Burden last week. He praises the neighborhood's grittiness, ambience and vivid atmosphere.
Scorsese is backing a plan that would limit the height of new development on the east side of the Bowery to eight stories. The plan also calls for preservation of several historic buildings.
Martin Scorsese
Stalls In Hawaii
Steven Tyler Act
The future is looking bleak for a celebrity privacy bill in Hawaii known as the Steven Tyler Act.
The proposal pushed by the Aerosmith lead singer would allow people to sue others who take photos or videos of their private moments. But after sailing through the Senate earlier this month following personal testimony from Tyler at a February hearing, the bill is missing deadlines in the state House, and key lawmakers say they won't push it through.
Rep. Angus McKelvey, of Maui, the chairman of the first of three House committees the bill needs to pass to get to the House floor, said he won't hold a hearing for the bill.
"There is zero support for that legislation in the House of Representatives," McKelvey, chairman of the consumer protection committee, told The Associated Press. "To say there is absolutely zero support would be an understatement."
Steven Tyler Act
8 Hours = 55 Days
Bobby Brown
Bobby Brown has been released from jail after serving less than a day of his 55-day jail sentence for a driving under the influence conviction.
A sheriff's spokesman said the 44-year-old R&B singer was released after eight hours and outfitted with an electronic ankle monitor Thursday because of jail overcrowding and good behavior.
Brown pleaded no contest to DUI and driving on a suspended license in February and turned himself in Wednesday. He will be required to serve four years on informal probation and complete an 18-month alcohol treatment program.
The conviction is Brown's second for DUI in less than a year. He avoided jail after pleading no contest to a March 2012 drunken driving case.
Bobby Brown
Passing Reference Rankles New Zealand
'Argo'
Thirteen minutes into the Oscar-winning movie "Argo," CIA agent Tony Mendez asks supervisor Jack O'Donnell what happened to a group of Americans when the U.S. Embassy was stormed in Tehran.
"The six of them went out a back exit," O'Donnell tells Mendez, played by Ben Affleck. "Brits turned them away. Kiwis turned them away. Canadians took them in."
That's the only mention of New Zealand in "Argo," but it is rankling Kiwis five months after the movie was released in the South Pacific nation. Even Parliament has expressed its dismay, passing a motion stating that Affleck, who also directed the film, "saw fit to mislead the world about what actually happened."
New Zealand joins a list of other countries, including Iran and Canada, that have felt offended by the fictionalized account of how a group of Americans was furtively sheltered and secreted out of Iran during the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
In fact, a U.S. State Department document dated Feb. 6, 1980 says "four Embassies - Canadians, British, Swedish and New Zealand - were involved in their protection and escape." The document was posted online last fall by the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum.
'Argo'
Demands Sotheby's Halt Auction
Mexico
The Mexican government is demanding that Sotheby's auction house halt the planned sale of 51 pre-Columbian Mexican artifacts, arguing they are protected national historical pieces.
The National Institute of Anthropology and History said Wednesday that Mexico has sent a diplomatic note to the French government seeking assistance in heading off the auction scheduled in Paris for Friday and Saturday.
It also implied that some of the artifacts offered in what is known as the 300-piece Barbier-Mueller Collection of Pre-Columbian Art are fakes or imitations.
"Of the 130 objects advertised as being from Mexico, 51 are archaeological artifacts that are (Mexican) national property, and the rest are handicrafts," the institute said in a statement.
Mexico
Found By Glacier
Pre-Viking Tunic
A pre-Viking woolen tunic found beside a thawing glacier in south Norway shows how global warming is proving something of a boon for archaeology, scientists said on Thursday.
The greenish-brown, loose-fitting outer clothing - suitable for a person up to about 176 cms (5 ft 9 inches) tall - was found 2,000 meters (6,560 ft) above sea level on what may have been a Roman-era trade route in south Norway.
Carbon dating showed it was made around 300 AD.
"It's worrying that glaciers are melting but it's exciting for us archaeologists," Lars Piloe, a Danish archaeologist who works on Norway's glaciers, said at the first public showing of the tunic, which has been studied since it was found in 2011.
A Viking mitten dating from 800 AD and an ornate walking stick, a Bronze age leather shoe, ancient bows, and arrow heads used to hunt reindeer are also among 1,600 finds in Norway's southern mountains since thaws accelerated in 2006.
Pre-Viking Tunic
Baroque Opera In Burlesque House
"Eliogabalo,"
Of all the unlikely venues for an opera, you'd have to go some to top The Box, a nightclub in a seedy Lower East Side neighborhood where black tie is optional, cameras are prohibited and dancers perform seminude every night at 1 a.m.
But it struck Neal Goren, artistic director of the adventurous Gotham Chamber Opera, as the perfect location for the U.S. premiere of Francesco Cavalli's "Eliogabalo," a baroque opera about a 3rd- century teenage Roman emperor whose sexual depravity was shocking even by the standards of that corrupt era.
After all, this is the same company that enjoyed a triumph three years ago with another "site-specific" staging, performing Haydn's comic opera "Il mondo della luna (The World on the Moon)" at the Hayden Planetarium.
The singers were ably accompanied by a string ensemble that included the theorbo, a long-necked plucked string instrument. Goren himself played the harpsichord. The opera, composed in 1667 but apparently never performed until 1999, was subjected to extensive cuts. That kept the running time of the production to about 2½ hours, but it also upset the pacing, making the plot machinations of Acts 2 and 3 seem rushed.
"Eliogabalo"
Top 20
Concert Tours
The Top 20 Concert Tours ranks artists by average box office gross per city and includes the average ticket price for shows in North America. The previous week's ranking is in parentheses. The list is based on data provided to the trade publication Pollstar by concert promoters and venue managers.
1. (1) George Strait; $1,424,279; $83.61.
2. (New) Cirque du Soleil - "Amaluna"; $1,396,697; $81.41.
3. (2) Justin Bieber; $1,085,510; $71.67.
4. (3) Dave Matthews Band; $959,710; $73.36.
5. (5) The Who; $872,490; $94.71.
6. (6) Ricardo Arjona; $840,988; $84.16.
7. (7) Cirque du Soleil - "Quidam"; $825,037; $57.59.
8. (9) Trans-Siberian Orchestra; $627,972; $51.82.
9. (8) Muse; $606,166; $56.50.
10. (New) Zac Brown Band; $585,200; $50.53.
11. (10) Carrie Underwood; $500,159; $58.55.
12. (11) Eric Church; $376,712; $46.68.
13. (12) Jeff Dunham; $343,488; $48.87.
14. (14) Robin Williams; $202,858; $93.93.
15. (13) Shinedown / Three Days Grace; $191,805; $38.80.
16. (New) Chris Tomlin; $185,213; $28.35.
17. (15) "Winter Jam" / Tobymac; $150,136; $12.03.
18. (17) Mannheim Steamroller; $138,379; $58.09.
19. (16) Ron White; $137,119; $51.08.
20. (18) 3 Doors Down / Daughtry; $130,133; $43.02.
Concert Tours
In Memory
Rise Stevens
Mezzo-soprano opera star Rise Stevens, who sang with the Metropolitan Opera for more than 20 years spanning the 1940s and 1950s, has died. She was 99.
Her son Nicolas Surovy says Stevens died Wednesday night at her Manhattan home.
Stevens started singing with the Met in 1938, on tour in Philadelphia. Among her greatest roles was the title character in the opera "Carmen," which she sang for 124 performances.
The Met released a statement calling her "a consummate artist, treasured colleague, and devoted supporter of the company for 75 years."
She stopped performing with the Met in 1961, but continued to support the organization.
She is also survived by her granddaughter. Surovy says no funeral will be held, but a private memorial is planned.
Rise Stevens
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