Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Domino's: Photos (Funny)
Pizza Delivery Instructions.
Tom Danehy: As the space shuttle program comes to an end, we should be asking: Now what? (Tucson Weekly)
Last Friday, I felt a mixture of anger, dismay and profound sadness as I sat and watched the final launch of the United States space shuttle.
Ralph D. Westfall: Where Has All The Money Gone? (Irascible Professor)
I have taught at two campuses in the California State University system since 1998. My personal experiences at those schools raised concerns about administrative practices. Further research revealed statistics that all the stakeholders should be aware of, because of their effects on both the cost and quality of the education we provide.
Roger Ebert's Journal: The Dirty Digger
Mike Royko called Rupert Murdoch The Alien. He landed on the Chicago Sun-Times like a bug-eyed monster from outer space and extruded poisonous slime. I was an eyewitness.
Connie Schultz: We Can't Let Bishop's Ban Slow Race for the Cure (Creators Syndicate)
Last weekend, the Roman Catholic bishop in Toledo, Ohio, Leonard Blair, issued a letter banning parishes and parochial schools from raising money for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation.
Susan Estrich: The American People (Creators Syndicate)
My friend Francie's mother used to be known by all as "the Nation." It was a loving nickname based on her tendency to make pronouncements to one and all about what the nation thought of a particular topic. She would laugh. I wonder if House Speaker John Boehner has a sense of humor.
Jim Hightower: THE GOP'S ASSAULT ON MEDICARE
The GOP intends to make an all-out assault on Medicare in the next Congress, but don't want to campaign on it. So, get in their face - the time to confront them is not after the elections, but now.
William Saletan: Men Are From Cuddle, Women Are From Penis (Slate)
A new study supposedly says women want sex but men want cuddling. Don't believe it.
Andrew Tobias: Two Videos That Could Try Your Sense of Humor
There are your limericks, your two-guys-walk-into-a-bar, your knock-knocks, and your paraprosdokians. In the latter, some simple thought takes an unexpected turn. This list has been making its way around the Internet:?1. "Where there's a will, I want to be in it."
Karen Zarker: "20 Questions: Simon Van Booy" (Popmatters)
1. The latest book or movie that made you cry?
"Captain Kitty's First Adventure" is a book about a cat that becomes a sea captain, despite being scared of water. That book made me cry, not only because it's first rate story telling and illustrating, but because my daughter wrote it and bound it with string as a Father's Day present.
David Bruce has 42 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $42 you can buy 10,500 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," "Maximum Cool," and "Resist Psychic Death."
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Reader Suggestions
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
BadtotheboneBob
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Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Another lovely marine layer.
Here's a complete list of Emmy Nominationas - 2011
Joins Cast Of "How I Met Your Mother"
Kal Penn
Kal Penn is ditching President Obama for Barney Stinson.
The "Harold and Kumar" star, who has served as associate director of the White House's Office of Public Engagement since July 2009, will join the cast of CBS hit "How I Met Your Mother," a source who knew of the casting told TheWrap.
While details about the recurring role are scant, the source said the part is significant.
The best part about Penn's new job? He'll be reunited with his "Harold and Kumar" co-star Neil Patrick "Tripping Balls" Harris, who plays the well-dressed, girl-chasing Stinson on the series.
But while Penn will be re-acquainting himself with the man who played Doogie Howser, M.D., he will apparently be saying goodbye to the White House staff, who have served as his co-stars on and off for the past two years.
Kal Penn
Recalled As A Charitable Giant
Harry Chapin
Before there was Band Aid or Live Aid, a We Are the World or Hands Across America, there was singer-songwriter Harry Chapin - lobbying for change in Congress, pestering an already convinced President Carter to establish a commission on world hunger, and passing the hat for donations at concerts large and small.
Chapin has been gone now nearly as long as he lived. He achieved artistic and commercial success with a string of hits in the 1970s, songs like "Cats in the Cradle," ''Taxi" and "Circle" that aging Baby Boomers - and their babies' babies - still cherish.
His work as an advocate for the hungry is a legacy that resonates 30 years after his death at age 38 when a tractor-trailer demolished his car on the Long Island Expressway. Chapin died only hours before he was to perform a free concert before an expected crowd of 25,000 at the island's Eisenhower Park.
Now another benefit concert is planned by members of the Chapin family, including daughter Jen and his brothers Tom and Steve - also recording artists - at a town park in Chapin's hometown of Huntington, on Long Island. Admission to the Saturday event is free, but fans are asked to bring donations of food and money to benefit the Long Island Cares food bank, another charity founded by Chapin.
Harry Chapin
Manuscript Fetches $1.6M
Jane Austen
An unfinished early Jane Austen manuscript sold at auction in London on Thursday for almost $1.6 million, triple its highest pre-sale estimate.
The draft of "The Watsons" sold for $1.601 million. The price includes a buyer's premium.
The auction house said the document sold to an anonymous buyer after extended four-way bidding in the salesroom.
The incomplete work is the earliest surviving manuscript for a novel by Austen, probably written in 1804 but not published in Austen's lifetime. Austen died in 1817 at age 41.
Sotheby's says it is the only major manuscript by the author still in private hands.
Jane Austen
Movies Companies Cut Back
Smoking
Three film companies have drastically reduced smoking in their movies aimed at children and teens, thanks in part to their policies to reduce on-screen tobacco use, a new study says.
Over the past five years, scenes involving tobacco dropped from an average of 23 to one per film for those companies and most of their youth movies had no smoking at all, the researchers reported Thursday. At movie makers without such policies, the decline was less - from an average of 18 to 10 incidents per film.
Health advocates and some doctors' groups have been pushing the film industry to reduce smoking in films. They have taken to watching top-grossing films and counting the number of scenes in which characters smoke, chew tobacco, hold a pack of cigarettes or in which tobacco use is otherwise implied.
The study, which focused on youth-rated films, looked at the three companies with policies to reduce smoking: Time Warner (Warner Bros.); Comcast (Universal and Focus Features); and the Walt Disney Company (Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone, Pixar and Buena Vista.)
Smoking
FBI Opens Review
Murdochs
Rupert Murdoch and his son James first refused, then agreed Thursday to appear before U.K. lawmakers investigating phone hacking and police bribery, while in the U.S., the FBI opened a review into allegations the Murdoch media empire sought to hack into the phones of Sept. 11 victims.
Those two developments - and the arrest of another former editor of a Murdoch tabloid - deepened the crisis for News Corp., which has seen its stock price sink as investors ask whether the scandal could drag down the whole company.
Murdoch defended News Corp.'s handling of the scandal, saying it will recover from any damage caused by the phone-hacking and police bribery allegations. The 80-year-old told The Wall Street Journal - which is owned by News Corp. - that he is "just getting annoyed" at all the recent negative press.
A law enforcement official in New York said the FBI was looking into allegations that employees of News Corp. tried to hack into the telephones of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.
Murdochs
Father Denies Stealing
Beyonce
Mathew Knowles insists he still has an amicable relationship with his daughter Beyonce - even though she dumped him as her manager two months ago - but is alleging that people close to her have tried to destroy his reputation with allegations that he stole from her.
Knowles filed papers in a Texas court this week alleging that members of Beyonce's camp, which he says includes her label, Columbia Records, Live Nation and her superstar husband Jay-Z's Roc Nation, have made "negative comments about me."
"We absolutely have not taken any money from Beyonce, and all dollars will be accounted for," he told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday afternoon. "In no way have we stole money. Again, this about the people who have made these claims - they have to come into the light."
Knowles guided his daughter's career since she was child, first to superstardom as part of the group Destiny's Child, and then as she continued with her blockbuster solo career. Beyonce has sold millions of records, won numerous Grammys, is a lucrative spokeswoman for different products, and has also had considerable success in film with movies like the Oscar-winning "Dreamgirls" and the movie "Obsessed."
When Beyonce announced in May that she would no longer use her father to guide her career, she stressed that at almost 30, she was ready to take control of her own affairs and pledged her adoration for him.
Beyonce
Sues Ex-Fawcett Associate
Ryan O'Neal
Ryan O'Neal sued a former associate of longtime partner Farrah Fawcett on Thursday, claiming the man is responsible for a Texas university's attempts to reclaim an Andy Warhol portrait of the actress.
O'Neal's defamation lawsuit against Craig Nevius Thursday seeks more than $1 million in damages and blames the actress' former collaborator for a lawsuit filed last week by the University of Texas system against O'Neal.
That lawsuit seeks return of a mixed-media portrait of Fawcett created by Warhol that Nevius and the university claim the actress bequeathed to the school's Austin, Texas campus.
O'Neal's lawsuit states that the school has known for more than a year that he has the portrait and that he is its rightful owner. He states Warhol gave it to him and that the two men had been friends long before the Fawcett artwork was created.
"O'Neal has no intention of ever parting with it during his lifetime, and upon his death he intends to bequeath it to his son and Ms. Fawcett's only child, Redmond O'Neal," the lawsuit states.
Ryan O'Neal
YouTube Account Suspended
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga's YouTube account was suspended Thursday. The notice read that the suspension was due to "multiple or severe violations of YouTube's copyright policy."
The Google Inc.-owned YouTube declined to comment. It's YouTube policy to remove accounts after three copyright violations, though they can be restored after being corrected.
Reports have suggested that the infringing video was a recently uploaded clip of Gaga's performance on Fuji TV. Messages left with Gaga's publicist and record label, Interscope, weren't immediately returned Thursday.
The account, "ladygagaofficial," is one of two for Gaga. The removed channel is run by Gaga's camp, while she also has an unaffected Vevo account.
Lady Gag
What Establishment Clause?
Gov. Good Hair
A group of atheists and agnostics filed a federal lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to stop an evangelical Christian prayer event next month that was proposed and is endorsed by Texas' governor.
The Freedom from Religion Foundation argues in its lawsuit filed in Houston that Republican Gov. Rick Perry's day of prayer and fasting would violate the constitutional ban on the government endorsing a religion. The event, which is called The Response and is billed as Christian-only, is scheduled for Aug. 6 at Houston's Reliant Stadium.
The complaint alleges Perry violated the First Amendment's establishment clause by organizing, promoting and participating in the event.
"The answers for America's problems won't be found on our knees or in heaven, but by using our brains, our reason and in compassionate action," said Dan Barker, a co-director of the foundation. "Gov. Perry's distasteful use of his civil office to plan and dictate a religious course of action to 'all citizens' is deeply offensive to many citizens, as well as to our secular form of government."
Gov. Good Hair
Post-Scandal, Director Moves Forward
John McTiernan
The film business came through the convulsion that was the Anthony Pellicano wiretapping case in most ways unscathed. The executives went on running their companies, the agents marched on down Wilshire Boulevard, and most of the big-shot lawyers kept working with their big-shot clients.
The conspicuous exception was director John McTiernan. Scrappy as one of his action stars, he's been contesting his guilt in an almost self-destructive series of legal moves.
But now he aims to use his -- perhaps temporary -- freedom to mount a movie.
The feisty and not untalented director, now 62, had been unhorsed while trying to manage his second act. His reputation as an action craftsman had taken a sharp dive with 2002's "Rollerball," even as he was caught on tape using Pellicano to investigate the film's producer, Charles Roven, over supposed -- and never substantiated -- misuse of production money.
John McTiernan
Second Break-In
Ed Sullivan Theater
A Florida man was arrested on Thursday for breaking into New York's Ed Sullivan Theater where David Letterman tapes his late night talk show, the second attempted burglary in less than a week, police said.
Aspiring musician Alvin Moore, 42, was charged with burglary and criminal mischief after using a newspaper stand to break multiple glass panes totaling some $1,500 in damages on the exterior of the theater where the "Late Show with David Letterman" is recorded near Times Square.
Moore's break-in attempt followed one on Sunday by another man, James Whittemore, 22, who was arrested in the lobby of the same theater and was also charged with burglary and criminal mischief.
Police said Moore, of Sebring, Florida, told officers he was aware of the previous break-in attempt and that he had committed the crime to seek attention.
Ed Sullivan Theater
Mansion Sale Closes For $85M
Candy Spelling
A British heiress has closed on her $85 million purchase of a massive Los Angeles mansion built by the late television mogul Aaron Spelling.
Beverly Hills real estate brokerage firm Hilton & Hyland says 22-year-old Petra Ecclestone officially became the owner of the lavish residence on Thursday.
Spelling's widow, Candy Spelling, put the 56,000 square-foot house on the market for $150 million two years ago, but ultimately let it go for less.
The home was built in 1990 and is the largest residence in Southern California. It is situated on 4.7 acres in the exclusive Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles.
Candy Spelling
Hometown Weighs Naming Bridge
Kurt Cobain
Residents of Kurt Cobain's Washington state hometown will have a chance to weigh in on a proposal to rename a bridge after the late Nirvana front man.
The Aberdeen City Council will accept public comment on the proposal at its July 27 meeting.
The measure would rename the Young Street Bridge over the Wishkah River after the grunge rock musician. It also would call a small park next to the bridge Cobain Landing.
Some council members favor the proposal. But KXRO-AM reports others expect negative comments about memorializing Cobain because of his drug use, suicide and negative comments about his hometown.
Kurt Cobain
ESPN's No. 1
Poly High
It may not come as a surprise to many locals, but Long Beach Polytechnic High School has the best sports program not only in the state, but also in the nation, according to ESPN.
The 116-year-old school's sports program finished No. 1 in ESPN's POWERADE FAB 50 All-Sports ranking of the nation's high schools for the 2010-11 school year and has been named ESPN's Cal-Hi Sports State School of the Year, placing it at the top of California high school sports programs.
"No matter how you look at it - from its long list of famous athletes to its long list of titles won over the years - there's really no other school in America that can match Long Beach Poly for its tradition of success in multiple sports," Mark Tennis, editor of ESPN's Cal-Hi Sports, wrote.
In addition to two state titles in track and field, Long Beach Poly has won 32 CIF state crowns, which is double that of the second-place school. And, according to the ESPN website, the Jackrabbits have won twice as many CIF Southern Section team titles in all sports combined as any other school.
Poly High
In Memory
Roberts Blossom
Character actor Roberts Blossom, who played the white-bearded neighbor "old man Marley" in the movie "Home Alone," has died at age 87 in Southern California.
Daughter Deborah Blossom tells the Los Angeles Times that her father died of natural causes July 8 at a Santa Monica nursing home.
Blossom starred on Broadway, as well as in television and movies. He won three Obie Awards for his off-Broadway work.
Movie credits include "The Hospital," ''Slaughterhouse-Five," ''The Great Gatsby," ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind," ''Escape From Alcatraz," ''Resurrection" and "Doc Hollywood." Blossom had a starring role in the 1974 cult horror movie "Deranged."
But he may be best-remembered as the neighbor in 1990's "Home Alone"
Blossom's TV credits include "Another World," ''Moonlighting," ''Northern Exposure" and "In the Heat of the Night."
Roberts Blossom
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