Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Hipster Disney Princess - THE MUSICAL (YouTube)
Disney Princesses are Hipsters! With Snow White, Ariel, Cinderella and Belle!
Ian's Letter: "Dear Mr. President" (YouTube)
I live in Las Vegas, Nevada and I am ten years old. I really hope that I can meet you someday because I would like to shake your hand and thank you for bringing my dad home from Iraq.
Catherine Baab-Muguira: "Safety Net Success Stories: Four Former 47%-ers Speak Out" (The Motley Fool)
At some point in your life, were you a 47%-er? On the heels of a leaked videotape in which GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney spoke harshly of those who pay no federal income tax, some now-successful Americans have been stepping forward and publicly answering this question in the affirmative.
Froma Harrop: In Politics, Hate Can Backfire (Creators Syndicate)
Republicans were supposed to have an easy time of it in North Dakota's U.S. Senate race.
Steven Pearlstein: "I am a job creator: A manifesto for the entitled" (Washington Post)
I am entitled to complain about the poor quality of service provided by government agencies even as I leave my own customers on hold for 35 minutes while repeatedly telling them how important their call is.
Tom Danehy: While we're not yet where we want to be, America has come a long way since May 1, 1950 (Tucson Weekly)
On the first of May in 1950, members of the Mosinee, Wis., American Legion-war veterans, all of them-dressed themselves in Russian military uniforms and staged a Red Dawn-like takeover of their small town.
Susan Estrich: Polls Don't Vote (Creators Syndicate)
Always believe your pollster when he gives you bad news, the late pollster Tubby Harrison used to say. For my part, I always believe the worst poll. The easiest way to lose is to believe you've won when the fat lady hasn't even started humming.
Susan Estrich: The Feminity Factor (Creators Syndicate)
The fact that looks play a role in politics is nothing new. John Kennedy won the first televised presidential debate among those watching it, while Richard Nixon won among those listening on the radio. In most presidential elections, the taller candidate wins. But for women especially, the tendency to make judgments based on looks distorts the issues that should govern, creating not simply a glass ceiling but also a mirrored one.
How I came face to face with my punk past (Guardian)
Terry Macalister is the energy editor of the Guardian. But when he took his son to an exhibition, he was shocked to see himself - on the cover of a punk fanzine from 35 years ago.
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
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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."
"Doug's Most Shared Facebook Post" Today
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Team Coco
Conan
Hey! We dropped Mitt Romney into the North By Northwest scene from Follow That Bird.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
The marine layer has returned. : )
Nominees Announced
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Rush, Deep Purple, Public Enemy and N.W.A. are among the group of first-time nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
They join returnees Heart, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Randy Newman, Donna Summer and Kraftwerk among the 15 artists vying for entry.
Even in the iPod age, the list of nominees up for induction in 2013 is as eclectic as they come. Nominees differ wildly in sound, origin and influence, ranging from the enduring prog rock of Canadian trio Rush and Procol Harum to German proto-electronica act Kraftwerk, the disco of Chic and Summer to the New Orleans funk of The Meters and the blues of Albert King and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
It's the sixth time on the ballot for Summer, but the first since her death in May at age 63. Chic is on the ballot for the seventh time since 2003.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming
"Name the Tribble"
The American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming is holding a "Name the Tribble" contest. The idea is to promote American Archives Month and show people that archives aren't just repositories of musty old documents - they can be home to cool stuff, too.
Such as a tribble, a small creature from the Star Trek television series. The American Heritage Center houses items donated by several celebrities including the late Forrest J. Ackerman, a science fiction publisher credited with inventing the term "sci-fi."
Ackerman had no ties to Wyoming but years ago donated many boxes of manuscripts, photographs, movie stills, correspondence, books, movie posters and artifacts including a tribble from the Star Trek set.
Entries can be emailed to ahc(at)uwyo.edu, with "Tribble Contest" and your name in the subject line. They also can be posted at the center's Facebook page.
"Name the Tribble"
67M Viewers For Debate
Nielsens
The Nielsen ratings company says an estimated 67.2 million people watched the first debate between President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney, the largest TV audience for a presidential debate since 1992.
Nielsen says you have to go back to the second debate involving Bill Clinton, George "Poppy" Bush and Ross Perot in 1992 for a more popular presidential debate.
Four years ago the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin attracted 69.9 million viewers.
Nielsen says 11.25 million people watched the debate on ABC, 11.07 million watched on NBC, 10.58 million on CBS, 10.44 million on Fox News Channel, 6.88 million on the Fox broadcast network, 6.05 million on CNN, 4.73 million on MSNBC and 2.58 million on Univision.
Nielsens
Picasso Painting Unveiled
JFK Library
A Picasso painting the famous artist created in denouncing war has come to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis.
Caroline Kennedy unveiled the "Rape of the Sabine Women" on Thursday, on loan through Jan. 6 from the Museum of Fine Arts. She said it shows the fear and uncertainty of the time.
She called the 1962 crisis over Soviet missiles in Cuba and subsequent ease of tensions her father's "greatest challenge."
The painting, a 6-foot-by-4-foot vertical oil on canvas, depicts in bold colors two armed men with spear and sword raised toward each other, standing over a woman and wailing child. Picasso started the work soon after the 13-day crisis, referencing a fabled abduction of Sabine women by ancient Romans.
JFK Library
Smithsonian Loaning Ruby Slippers
"The Wizard of Oz"
Dorothy's ruby slippers from "The Wizard of Oz" are leaving Washington on their first international journey to London's Victoria and Albert Museum.
Judy Garland wore the shoes in the 1939 film in which she played a Kansas farm girl on a magical journey. The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History announced the rare loan of its popular slippers Thursday.
They will be shown with Dorothy's blue-and-white gingham dress in "Hollywood Costume," an exhibit opening Oct. 20 in London. Curators say it's the first time Dorothy's dress and shoes have been together since the movie was filmed. The dress is part of a private collection.
The Smithsonian plans to hold a departure ceremony Tuesday. The slippers will return Nov. 21.
"The Wizard of Oz"
Offered To Take Pay Cut
Alec Baldwin
Actor Alec Baldwin said on Thursday he offered to take a salary cut to keep NBC comedy "30 Rock" on the air.
As the Emmy-winning show starts its 7th and final season on Thursday, Baldwin, who plays the debonair fictional NBC head Jack Donaghy, posted on Twitter; "I offered NBC to cut my pay 20 % in order to have a full 7th and 8th seasons of 30 Rock. I realize times have changed. I am looking forward to some time off."
NBC said in May that the 7th season would be the last for the show, and it would have just 13 episodes rather than the regular 21-23.
Despite a fervent fan base, the show has only attracted modest ratings, falling from a high of about 7.5 million viewers per episode in 2008/2009 season to an average of 4.6 million last season.
Alec Baldwin
Arrested Protesting Pipeline
Daryl Hannah
Actress Daryl Hannah has been arrested along with a 78-year-old northeast Texas landowner while protesting construction of a pipeline designed to bring crude oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries.
Hannah's manager, Paul Bassis, says Hannah was arrested Thursday evening.
Bassis says Hannah and landowner Eleanor Fairchild were standing in front of heavy equipment brought onto the woman's property in Winnsboro, about 100 miles east of Dallas.
Several acres of Fairchild's farm have been condemned by TransCanada. She says she opposes TransCanada's plan to transport heavy tar-sands crude from Canada to the Gulf Coast.
Daryl Hannah
H8er Jokes About Recent DUI
Archbishop Salvatore Joseph Cordileone
Amid heavy security and the splendor of his faith's most sacred rites, the new Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco assumed office Thursday without referring to the distress his appointment has aroused in this gay-friendly city, but offering self-deprecating jokes about his recent drunken driving arrest.
Archbishop Salvatore Joseph Cordileone, wearing gold and red robes with a matching miter, told an audience of more than 2,000 invited guests at his installation mass that he was grateful for the messages of support he had received from people of different religious and political viewpoints following the Aug. 25 arrest in his home town of San Diego.
"I know in my life God has always had a way of putting me in my place. I would say, though, that in the latest episode of my life God has outdone himself," Cordileone said with a chuckle as he delivered his first homily as archbishop.
The 56-year-old priest, the second-youngest U.S. archbishop, went on to say he did not know "if it's theologically correct to say God has a way of making himself known in this way," and asked for the indulgence of other high-ranking church leaders in the audience.
He was one of the early engineers of California's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage in 2008, and since 2011 has chaired the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' subcommittee charged with opposing efforts to legalize gay unions.
Archbishop Salvatore Joseph Cordileone
Denied Eagle Award
Boy Scout
A longtime Boy Scout claims he's being denied the organization's highest honor because he's gay.
Ryan Andresen, who lives near San Francisco, recently finished an extensive service project needed to earn his Eagle Scout award, but his troop leader refuses to give him the rank.
Ryan claims the scoutmaster knew about his sexual orientation well before he started the project and paperwork for the honor.
"He had been telling me all along that we'd get by the gay thing," Ryan told Yahoo News. "It was by far the biggest goal of my life. It's totally devastating."
The scoutmaster of Troop 212 in Moraga, Calif., did not immediately return phone and email messages seeking comment.
Boy Scout
'Melrose Place' Actress' Trial
Amy Locane-Bovenizer
A former "Melrose Place" actress charged in a fatal auto accident two years ago was being chased by another driver, her attorney told jurors on the first day of her manslaughter trial Thursday.
A prosecutor countered that Amy Locane-Bovenizer was intoxicated at the time and that caused the crash that killed Helene Seeman and injured her husband, Fred.
Locane-Bovenizer, 40, is charged with aggravated manslaughter and assault by auto and faces up to 30 years in prison if she is convicted.
Attorney Blair Zwillman told a Somerville jury that Locane-Bovenizer was pursued for 4 miles by a woman whose car she had rear-ended, The Star-Ledger reported. He said the woman honked her horn and flashed her lights, causing Locane-Bovenizer to drive nearly 20 mph over the speed limit on narrow country roads.
The chase ended when the actress slammed into the Seemans' vehicle as it pulled into a driveway.
Amy Locane-Bovenizer
Kansas Judge Blocks Auction
"In Cold Blood"
A Kansas judge has temporarily blocked the auction of some documents from the investigation of the 1959 murder case that inspired the best-selling book and movie "In Cold Blood."
Relatives of Harold Nye, one of the investigators in the brutal murders of a family in Holcomb, Kansas, planed to auction them.
"The criminal investigation case materials are clearly the property of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and should not be auctioned off, particularly for personal gain," Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said in a statement.
Nye rose to become director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation between 1969 and 1971. He died in 2003. Nye was a source for Truman Capote's book, which became a movie in 1967.
Vintage Memorabilia of Seattle owner Gary McAvoy, whose auction house was named in the court filing, said the records in dispute are two personal notebooks Harold Nye kept during the investigation. He said other records the state cites in the lawsuit have long ago been made public in various places, although Kansas is still seeking to prevent their sale.
"In Cold Blood"
National Museum Closes After 124 Years
Bosnia
It survived the breakup of the Austrian empire, two world wars, the longest city siege in modern history and a bloody war in the 1990s that killed 100,000 people. Yet after 124 years, Bosnia's National Museum closed its doors Thursday due to dwindling state funding and disputes among rival ethnic groups.
Having not received their salaries for a year, employees gathered at the fountain in the museum's botanical garden and threw a coin into it, making a wish that the institution will reopen soon. Then they left the building in downtown Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, and nailed wooden boards that read "closed" across its front door.
Museum director Adnan Busuladzic says he has lost hope that politicians will solve the problem any time soon.
This museum and six other institutions that are the custodians of Bosnia's national heritage - and care for precious medieval manuscripts, religious relicts and natural history artifacts, among other items - are victims of the 1995 peace agreement that ended Bosnia's war. The deal split the Balkan nation along ethnic lines into two semi-autonomous parts linked by a weak central government and guided by a constitution that did not envisaged a ministry of culture.
Bosnia
Dutch Boat Barred From Morocco
Women on Waves
A Dutch "abortion boat" bound for the Moroccan port of Smir has been blocked from entering the harbor. The campaign created by the Women on Waves group sails to countries where abortion is illegal and was due to arrive in the Moroccan port today to carry out abortions and provide advice to women, but the Moroccan authorities stopped them from docking, sealing the area and citing "military maneuvers" as the reason.
The group's founder, Dr. Rebecca Gomperts told the BBC they plan to launch "a surprise" in response but did not elaborate. She said the entire harbor was blocked and no one was being allowed to enter.
Dr. Gunilla Kleiverda, one of the gynecologists for Women on the Waves who is currently in Smir Harbor told ABC News, "of course, we always expect problems, that's part of being involved with Women of the Waves," adding that "the most important thing is to change the law and we make abortion legalized."
According to Kleiverda, the issue of illegal abortion is a "big women's health problem." The group's website highlights this with statistics that show "approximately 600 to 800 women still have an abortion every day. While wealthy women can afford safe abortion access, women of low socio-economic-status must often resort to unsafe methods that can result in morbidity and death… access to safe abortion is fundamentally an issue of social justice. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), unsafe abortion methods cause 13 percent of pregnancy-related deaths."
Women on Waves
Scottish Man Dies, Taking Dialect With Him
Cromarty
In a remote fishing town on the tip of Scotland's Black Isle, the last native speaker of the Cromarty dialect has passed away, taking with him a little fragment of the English linguistic mosaic.
Academics said Wednesday that Bobby Hogg, who was 92 when he died last week, was the last person fluent in the dialect once common to the seaside town of Cromarty, 175 miles (280 kilometers) north of Edinburgh.
Cromarty, which counts just over 700 people, is at the very end of a sparsely populated peninsula of forest and farmland. It's separated from Inverness, the closest city, by the Beauly Firth, a wide body of cold water where salmon run and dolphins frolic.
The Cromarty dialect included a helping of archaic "thees" and "thous" as well as a wealth of seafaring vocabulary, including three sets of words for "second fishing line."
A lexicon of Cromarty words, relying in large part on Hogg's speech, gave "Oo thee keepan?" as Cromarty's version of "How are you?" and "Hiv thoo a roosky sazpence i thi pooch?" for "Can you lend me some money?"
Cromarty
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. (New) Madonna; $5,128,536; $165.55.
2. (1) Kenny Chesney / Tim McGraw; $4,424,809; $88.92.
3. (2) Roger Waters; $2,800,185; $113.61.
4. (4) Cirque du Soleil - "Michael Jackson: The Immortal"; $2,610,093; $98.33.
5. (3) Coldplay; $2,273,519; $83.87.
6. (5) Dave Matthews Band; $1,413,318; $54.93.
7. (6) Phish; $1,266,553; $54.34.
8. (7) Enrique Iglesias / Jennifer Lopez; $1,114,513; $79.70.
9. (8) "Gigantes Tour" / Marc Anthony / Marco Antonio Solis / Chayanne; $1,042,502; $106.99.
10. (9) Jason Aldean; $742,641; $39.58.
11. (10) "Honda Civic Tour" / Linkin Park; $702,819; $49.66.
12. (New) James Taylor; $662,889; $58.27.
13. (11) Iron Maiden; $635,664; $58.14.
14. (12) Brad Paisley; $609,528; $39.06.
15. (13) Rascal Flatts; $566,907; $37.94.
16. (14) Journey; $545,034; $59.35.
17. (15) Def Leppard / Poison; $494,278; $61.92.
18. (16) Wiz Khalifa / Mac Miller; $449,346; $27.21.
19. (17) "Vans Warped Tour"; $390,735; $29.39.
20. (18) Il Divo; $376,255; $85.25.
Concert Tours
In Memory
R.B. Greaves
R. B. Greaves, a pop singer whose "Take a Letter, Maria" was a 1969 hit, has died in Los Angeles. He was 68.
Ronald Bertram Greaves died of prostate cancer on Sept. 27 at his home, said Craig Harvey, Los Angeles County coroner's chief of operations.
Greaves was a nephew of the legendary R&B singer Sam Cook. He was born on a U.S. Air Force base in the former British Guyana.
Living in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, he recorded several soul singles as Sonny Childe.
It was after moving to the United States that he scored his biggest hit as R.B. Greaves.
"Take a Letter, Maria" tells the story of a man who comes home to find "the woman I thought I knew in the arms of another man."
He dictates a final letter to her through his secretary with the chorus: "Take a letter, Maria. Address it to my wife. Say I won't be coming home, gonna start a new life."
The song, with its soul style, catchy chorus and brassy horn edge, went to No. 2 on the Billboard chart in 1969. It earned Greaves a gold record, selling a million copies, and remains a popular oldie.
Greaves also broke into the Top 40 in 1970 with his version of the Burt Bacharach-Hal David tune, "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me."
R.B. Greaves
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