Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Fireman dresses as Spider-Man to rescue boy
Comic-loving autistic kid on balcony had refused to let others near him.
Andrew Tobias: Supremely Confident Predictions (andrewtobias.com)
The Republicans are quite sure the President's approach is a disaster. But how is that any different from the last go-round? It was "the economy, Stupid" in 1992. And again - only worse - in 2008.
Q&A with Less Antman (thekirkreport.com)
I was class valedictorian at Schurr High School in Montebello, then attended the University of California at Berkeley from 1974 to 1977, and still hold the record for being the only attendee of Cal never to smoke marijuana, although I did sit near the fraternities at football games, so I did inhale. I majored in Business Administration with a specialization in Accounting.
David Letterman: Top 10 Reasons I Got Married (huffingtonpost.com)
David Letterman and Regina Lasko finally married last week after 23 years of dating - and Tuesday night on "The Late Show" Letterman gave his top ten reasons for getting married:
10. Poconos offers newlyweds free room with champagne-glass jacuzzi.
COLIN MCGUIRE: "Getting to the Point: An Interview with Anthony Hamilton" (popmatters.com)
The singer's not resting after his Grammy-winning work with Al Green, but he does seem to be happy these days.
Oh, mother! (guardian.co.uk)
Why did Hope Davis feel so peeved when she was asked to play Johnny Depp's mother in a new film? Could it be because she was, er, exactly the same age as him? What on earth is behind these bizarre casting decisions, asks Hadley Freeman.
Roger Moore: Q&A with 'Duplicity' director Tony Gilroy (The Orlando Sentinel)
Tony Gilroy is lapping it up. An Oscar nominee for writing and directing "Michael Clayton," much in demand as a screenwriter thanks to his adapting the Jason Bourne action films, he's having more love thrown his way by critics for his latest, the "smart, droll and dazzling to look at and listen to" corporate espionage romance, "Duplicity."
Brad Balfour: Actor Nicolas Cage Looks Ahead With "Knowing" (huffingtonpost.com)
Said Cage, "I got a little tired of movies where I had to shoot people. I got to thinking about the power of film and what that power is. The power is in fact that it really can change people's minds."
Robert W. Butler: Adult-targeted animation among DVD releases this month (McClatchy Newspapers)
Things are busy on the animation front with three noteworthy efforts - all of them aimed squarely at adult audiences - making their DVD debuts this month. They include a spin-off of the big "Watchmen" movie, a French film of astounding visual beauty effort and a 70-year-old classic.
Luaine Lee: Jonathan Rhys Meyers returns in 3rd season of Showtime's 'The Tudors' (McClatchy-Tribune News Service)
Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers thinks he still has worlds to conquer, though he's won five awards and been nominated for even more.
Roger Ebert: The new great American director
Ramin Bahrani is the new great American director. After three films, each a master work, he has established himself as a gifted, confident filmmaker with ideas that involve who and where we are at this time. His films pay great attention to ordinary lives that are not so ordinary at all.
David Bruce: Wise Up! Husbands and Wives (athensnews.com)
In the first half of the 20th century, the Chicago White Sox had an effective way of ensuring that players maintained their training. Whenever a player would stay out late at night while on the road, Jimmy Dykes would send this form letter to the player's wife: "Your husband has got into the habit of staying out late of nights. I wish you would find where he goes and what he does and let me know."
ATC (A Touch of Class): I'm in Heaven When You Kiss Me (youtube.com)
The Weekly Poll
The next Poll will be April 7th - BadToTheBoneBob's 'out state' on vacation.
Of the 148 episodes comprising the original 'Twilight Zone', how many were written by or adapted from other works by Rod Serling?
Which organization was the archenemy of 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.'?
wrote:
Reader Warning Update
april 1 virus
Here's a free microsoft scan
(onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm) just in case it was not noticed in yesterdays link
i have no connection to bill gates but i will say that i like him a whole lot more since hr became a philanthropist
gary in pa
Thanks, Gary!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and warmer.
Returns To 'The Price is Right'
Bob Barker
Bob Barker returned to "The Price Is Right" - and this time he was the showcase.
After nearly two years in retirement, the 85-year-old former game show host was invited to come on down to "The Price Is Right" to promote his upcoming memoir, "Priceless Memories," due out April 6.
Barker on Wednesday once again stood on the set where he had worked for 35 years. As he walked the halls of the studio, old co-workers greeted Barker with broad smiles, seemingly as happy to have him back as he was to be there.
Dressed in a black suit with a hot pink shirt and matching tie, the silver-haired host appeared alongside successor Drew Carey near the finale of the show, which airs April 16, to present two prize showcases that were somewhat stretched to promote Barker's memoir.
Bob Barker
Farrelly Brothers
'The Three Stooges'
The studio MGM says double Oscar winner Sean Penn has signed on to play Larry in the Farrelly brothers' big-screen update of "The Three Stooges."
Jim Carrey was "in negotiations" for the role of Curly, said MGM spokesman Grey Munford. The studio first featured the stooges in a series of shorts and features beginning in 1933.
Munford would not confirm reports that Benicio Del Toro will play Moe.
He said said filming begins this fall on the comedy, which is expected to be released in 2010.
'The Three Stooges'
Trying To Adopt Again
Madonna
Madonna is planning to adopt a second child from Malawi, officials said Thursday, but questions have already been raised over whether the newly divorced pop star will face obstacles because of her single mom status.
An official at the Malawi welfare department said Madonna, who is 50 and a mother of three, had filed adoption papers in the southern African country. Another person in Malawi close to the case said Madonna would be there this weekend and a court could hear her adoption case as soon as Monday.
A U.S. government official confirmed that an adoption bid by Madonna, an American, was under way.
Madonna
Two-Hand Concerto Return
Leon Fleisher
U.S. pianist Leon Fleisher's right hand is one of the most famous in music.
In the mid-1960s the superstar of the classical music world lost the ability to play with the hand when two fingers became immobile due to a condition called focal dystonia.
After 30 years of teaching, conducting and playing music composed for the left hand, Fleisher regained the use of his right hand after treatment involving botox injections.
The first recording since his rehabilitation came in 2004, and now the 80-year-old has released a recording of Mozart piano concertos including one where he performs with his wife.
Leon Fleisher
Foundation Aims To Buy Home
Ingmar Bergman
A new foundation dedicated to the legacy of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman is seeking financing to buy his home, a source close to the project said Thursday amid reports the house would sell for more than three million euros.
"If we can pull together enough money we'd like to buy the house," Kerstin Kalstroem, a member of a working group currently creating the Bergman Centre on Faaroe foundation, told AFP.
The foundation, set to be headed by former Swedish prime minister Ingvar Carlsson, has received 300,000 kronor (27,500 euros, 37,300 dollars) in start-up capital from the municipality of Gotland, which incorporates the small island of Faaroe in the Baltic Sea where Bergman lived until his death in 2007.
According to Swedish media reports, however, the house of the maker of such masterpieces as "Wild Strawberries" (1957), "The Virgin Spring" (1960), "Scenes from a Marriage" (1973), and "Saraband" (2003) was expected to cost around 35 million kronor (3.2 million euros, 4.4 million dollars).
Ingmar Bergman
Cheney's No Bid Contracts
Bad Wiring
Military inspectors are racing to examine 90,000 U.S.-run facilities in Iraq with the goal of repairing electrical problems before more troops are electrocuted or shocked while showering or using appliances.
About one-third of the inspections so far have turned up major electrical problems, according to interviews and an internal military document obtained by The Associated Press. Half of the problems they found have since been fixed, but about 65,000 facilities still must be inspected, which could take the rest of this year. Senior Pentagon officials were on Capitol Hill this week for briefings on the findings.
The work assigned to Task Force SAFE, which oversees the inspections and repairs, is aimed at preventing deaths like that of Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, 24, of Pittsburgh. He died in January 2008, one of at least three soldiers killed while showering since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Scores more soldiers suffered shocks between September 2006 and July 2008, according to a database maintained by KBR Inc., the Houston-based contractor that oversees maintenance at most U.S. facilities in Iraq.
Bad Wiring
Getting Left Behind
Braille
Jordan Gilmer has a degenerative condition that eventually will leave him completely blind. But as a child, his teachers did not emphasize Braille, the system of reading in which a series of raised dots signify letters of the alphabet.
"They gave him Braille instruction, but they didn't tell us how to get Braille books, and they didn't want him using it during the day," said Jordan's mother, Carrie Gilmer of Minneapolis. Teachers said Braille would be "a thing he uses way off in the far distant future, and don't worry about it."
That experience is common: Fewer than 10 percent of the 1.3 million legally blind people in the United States read Braille, and just 10 percent of blind children are learning it, according to a report to be released Thursday by the National Federation of the Blind.
By comparison, at the height of its use in the 1950s, more than half the nation's blind children were learning Braille. Today Braille is considered by many to be too difficult, too outdated, a last resort.
Instead, teachers ask students to rely on audio texts, voice-recognition software or other technology. And teachers who know Braille often must shuttle between schools, resulting in haphazard instruction, the report says.
Braille
Not Of This Century
Pope Benedict the Atavistic
From the Gospel to Google, the church has been seeking ways to announce merchandize the word of Christ for 2,000 years.
Pope Benedict XVI has gone on YouTube and his speeches appear in Chinese on the Vatican Web site, but judging from the uproar over a Holocaust-denying bishop and his pronouncement that condoms deepen the AIDS crisis, he's clearly struggling with his message.
During his nearly four-year papacy, criticism has been pouring in from Muslims, Jews and members of his own flock, as the German pontiff seems to step into controversy at every turn. The attacks by European governments this past week over condom use are unprecedented.
The controversy could in the future weigh on cardinals when they choose Benedict's successor, perhaps leading them to look for a younger man more attuned to a wired world.
Pope Benedict the Atavistic
Paintings To Be Sold
Hitler
Thirteen paintings attributed to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, including a self portrait painted when he was a struggling artist in Vienna, are to be sold in Britain next month.
Two years ago, 21 paintings attributed to Hitler were sold for 118,000 pounds, or more than twice the pre-sale estimate, by an auction house in Cornwall. The sale raised doubts among some art experts as to the paintings' authenticity.
"I've seen quite a bit of Hitler art, and the subjects tend to be the same," said Richard Westwood-Brookes, a historical documents expert who will be holding the sale for Mullocks.
He said Hitler liked to paint pictures of flowers, especially roses, and romantic landscapes with cottages.
Hitler
Gets Probation
Henry Hill
A mobster-turned-FBI informant whose life inspired the movie "Goodfellas" has pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of public intoxication a week after arrest warrants were issued when he failed to appear in court.
Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta in the 1990 Martin Scorcese film, received two years' probation, credit for four days served in jail and a fine of $220 in a San Bernardino court Tuesday.
Hill was twice cited in 2008 for public drunkenness when he was in San Bernardino for alcohol counseling.
The FBI leveraged a drug trafficking bust to get Hill, now 65, to testify about New York mob murders and crime rings in 1980. He was initially in the federal witness protection program, but was removed in the early 1990s because of drug arrests.
Henry Hill
Duped In Art Scam
John McEnroe
Former tennis champion John McEnroe was duped along with Bank of America, investment firms, art owners and collectors in a sophisticated $88 million art investment scam revealed in New York on Thursday.
Art dealer Lawrence Salander, 59, was arrested at his New York home on Thursday, when he and his gallery were charged with 100 counts, including grand larceny and securities fraud, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau told a news conference.
Salander pleaded not guilty in New York's Supreme Court and his bail was set at $1 million. He faces up to 25 years in prison on the most serious charge.
Morgenthau said the scheme, which lasted from 1994 to 2007, included luring investors who paid cash in exchange for shares of ownership of works of art.
John McEnroe
Prison Witheld Medical Treatment
Nevada
A judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit alleging prison staff withheld medical treatment from the condemned manager of the 1950s band Coasters, leading to his death from gangrene.
U.S. District Judge Larry Hicks said in an order filed Tuesday that the lawsuit filed by Patrick Cavanaugh's family can continue against Ely State Prison Warden E.K. McDaniel and six other prison administrators and medical staff.
Cavanaugh was convicted in 1985 of killing Coasters band member Nathaniel "Buster" Wilson in Las Vegas. Cavanaugh died at age 60 after developing gangrene in his legs from complications of diabetes.
"Given the profound and unmistakable smell of putrefying flesh, there can be no question that every medical provider and correctional officer in that infirmary was acutely award of Mr. Cavanaugh's condition," the suit said.
Nevada
In Memory
Dan Seals
Dan Seals, who was England Dan in the pop duo England Dan and John Ford Coley and later had a successful country career, has died of complications from cancer. He was 61.
With England Dan and John Ford Coley, Seals had hits including "I'd Really Like to See You Tonight" and "Nights Are Forever," both in 1976. His country hits in the '80s and '90s included "Bop," "You Still Move Me," "Love on Arrival," and a duet with Marie Osmond, "Meet Me in Montana."
Seals, who is survived by his wife and four children, was in hospice care when he died.
Seals' older brother, Jimmy, was the Seals in Seals & Crofts, who recorded the hits "Summer Breeze" and "Diamond Girl" in the 1970s.
Until Dan Seals got sick, the brothers were working as a duo, Seals & Seals. They performed some shows and were recording an album but never finished it. The songs they did complete, about eight in all, will be released.
Seals, whose father was a pipefitter, was born in McCamey, Texas, and grew up in Iraan, Texas, and Dallas.
Dan Seals
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