Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Tom Danehy: Tom wonders what all these white women see in President Donald Trump (Tucson Weekly)
Until his dying day, Sigmund Freud wondered what women want. Well, here in America, one-third of white women want a bully and admitted sex offender to be in charge of their government.
Helaine Olen: It's Trump's stock market now (Washington Post)
Trump pitched himself to gullible voters as a business genius, something that was all but laughable to anyone who actually understood how business worked. He inherited the bulk of his money and connections, two things that did not prevent him from taking his companies into bankruptcy multiple times. His comeback in the 2000s was almost certainly the result, not of unique business insight, but of some combination of marketing mythology enabled by "The Apprentice" and a willingness to engage in deals that look suspiciously similar to cash laundering with an international assortment of shady kleptocrats.
David Leonhardt: The Urgent Question of Trump and Money Laundering (NY Times)
For months, Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has been trying to get Congress to pay attention to the possibility of money laundering. He points out that Mueller's mandate does not necessarily include a full investigation of Trump's businesses. But those businesses could still have behaved in ways that give Putin, a hostile foreign leader, leverage over the president of the United States. "We need to find out whether that is the case and say so. Or we need to find out that is not the case and say so," Schiff told me. "But to leave it as an unanswered question, I just think would be negligent to our national security." So far, congressional Republicans have chosen negligence.
Alexandra Petri: The president has been shockingly presidential for the last six minutes (Washington Post)
During the stated time, several bats flew by the window and Trump did not bite their heads off; celebrities criticized him and he declined to respond; reporters asked questions and Trump did not insult them; and three separate Twitter controversies began and ended without any comment from him whatsoever. Then he woke up. Still, since then, for the last six minutes, the president has been remarkably restrained.
Matthew Yglesias: The Weekly Standard's demise is a reminder that there are some ideas worse than Trumpism (Vox)
The most principled resistance to Trump comes from conservatism's most dangerous faction.
Paul Waldman: Looks like an actual case of election fraud has occurred. Guess who's responsible. (Washington Post)
While there's a lot of investigating still to be done, what may well have happened here is that Dowless's operation collected absentee ballots from voters and either filled them out themselves or, failing that, turned in the ones from Republicans and tossed the ones from Democrats in the trash. To be clear, we don't know for sure that's what happened, but it's what it looks like.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
answered:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Bruce
Anecdotes
• A production of La Bohème in Hamburg involved nudity. A young woman playing Euphémie, Schaunard's girlfriend, appeared completely nude to model for a picture and donned clothing only when Rodolfo worried that she might catch cold. At a dress rehearsal, things went fine until the nude actress appeared, then the members of orchestra tried to play their instruments in strange positions so they could around and look at the nude actress. Of course, this caused havoc with the music. The conductor, Nello Santi, solved this problem by asking the nude actress if she would walk to the end of the stage for a few moments so the members of the orchestra could look at her. She didn't mind, the members of the orchestra got a good look, then the rest of the rehearsal proceeded smoothly.
• Jayne Mansfield was a very healthy woman - her studio chair didn't bear her name; instead, it bore the legend, "40-21-35." Indeed, her breasts often upstaged other actresses. For example, at an event staged for Jane Russell's movie Underwater, Jayne fell into a swimming pool and lost her swimming suit top. On another occasion, when Sophia Loren was being honored at a Hollywood reception, Jayne went over to her table to greet her, and bent over. One of her breasts came out of her dress, and Clifton Webb, who was sitting beside Ms. Loren, said, "Please, Miss Mansfield, we are wine drinkers at this table."
• Ewan McGregor's parents are huge fans of his work, and they often bring many friends with them to attend his films' premieres in Scotland. However, when his movie The Pillow Book, which featured lots of nudity, including full-frontal nudity, came out, Mr. McGregor told his parents that they might not want to bring friends to see that particular premiere. Nevertheless, shortly afterward his parents sent him a fax to say that they loved the film. His father added this postscript to the fax: "I'm glad to see you've inherited one of my major assets."
• Carol Cleveland is a beautiful woman who acted frequently with Monty Python's Flying Circus, but today she is upset because so many fans say they saw her naked on the Monty Python TV series. Actually, she explains, she was never naked at all. The closest she ever came to being naked was when she was being chased by a man-eating roll-top desk, and cacti kept ripping off her clothes. In the last scene, she loses her top as she runs away from the camera. Other than that, she wore showgirl costumes and lingerie a lot, but she was never naked.
• As a gay teenager, author Joel Perry used to hide copies of Playgirl, which features a nude male centerfold each issue, under his bed. One day, his mother found them, so he told her that he was keeping them for a girl named Susie so that Susie's mother wouldn't find them. She believed him. Years later, after he had been living with a male lover for 11 years, she asked if he was gay. After hearing that he was, she said, "Oh, honey, and you're not even a good dancer."
• Back when women jockeys first started racing, they tended to upset some of the men jockeys. Sometimes, the men jockeys would be naked in the steam bath and when they would walk - still naked - into the jockeys' room, they would see women jockeys waiting to weigh in. This really didn't bother the women jockeys, one of whom said, "I never notice faces."
• On the Carol Burnett Show, Ms. Burnett once played the role of a woman in a nudist camp being interviewed by a reporter played by Harvey Korman. When Mr. Korman asked how people danced at the nudist camp, she replied, "Very carefully." Unfortunately, the censors objected to that line. No problem. The writers substituted a new line: "Cheek to cheek."
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Reader Comment
Current Events
I'm beyond fed up with the misogynistic comments from Tweety Bird Matthews and others about Hillary (and Michelle) at Bush's funeral. Janet found this article with video to refute Tweety Bird, Lame Huckster Todd and therest are saying:
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
JD took the day off.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Another wet day and over 2" of rain.
Steps Down From Hosting Oscars
Kevin Hart
Kevin Hart has officially stepped down as the host of the upcoming Academy Awards after facing controversy over recently resurfaced tweets from nearly a decade ago, containing homophobic remarks and offensive slurs.
Hart took to Twitter Thursday night to announce his decision, while extending an apology to the LGBTQ community over his comments.
"I have made the choice to step down from hosting this year's Oscar's," Hart wrote. "This is because I do not want to be a distraction on a night that should be celebrated by so many amazing talented artists. I sincerely apologize to the LGBTQ community for my insensitive words from my past."
"I'm sorry that I hurt people," he continued in a following tweet. "I am evolving and want to continue to do so. My goal is to bring people together not tear us apart. Much love & appreciation to the Academy. I hope we can meet again."
The post comes less than two hours after the comic defiantly said he would not apologize in a video he shared to Instagram, claiming that he'd "addressed this several times" over the years and didn't feel he needed to do so again.
Kevin Hart
Global Citizen of the Year
Amal Clooney
Amal Clooney has hit out President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Compromised) for his relentless attacks on the press and giving a "green light" to autocratic regimes around the world, during a speech at the United Nations.
Clooney, the Global Citizen of the Year honoree at the UN Correspondents Association Awards, delivered a passionate speech about the need to defend press freedoms, citing several cases where she represented imprisoned journalists in Myanmar, and has also called out other "autocratic regimes" like North Korea, the Philippines, Turkey, Brazil, and Hungary for contributing to "the chilling effect" on the press.
"The US president has given such regimes a green light and labelled the press in this country the enemy of the people," Ms Clooney said, referring to his constant bullying and name-calling of media organisations and press members as "enemy of the people" and "fake news."
Ms Clooney also referred to the "brutal torture and murder" of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last month. The Saudi public prosecutor has blamed a "rogue" kidnap operation, involving an attempt to take Mr Khashoggi back to Riyadh, for the killing.
Amal Clooney
'God Letter' Auctioned
Albert Einstein
A handwritten letter by Albert Einstein rejecting religion has been auctioned for almost $3m (£2.3m).
The "God letter" was written in 1954 in Einstein's native German in response to the work of the philosopher Eric Gutkind.
In the letter, the theoretical physicist outlines his thoughts on religion and his own Jewish identity.
The letter was sold for almost twice the auction house's expected value of between $1m and $1.5m.
In his letter, Einstein states: "The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends.
Albert Einstein
Trolls Mrs. Palin
Sacha Baron Cohen
Awards season is on with Thursday's Golden Globes nominations. And while many were "happy just to be nominated," appropriately thanked the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and shouted out to co-stars and fellow nominees, there were some reactions - for instance, Sacha Baron Cohen straight trolling Sarah Palin - that stand out.
Cohen crashed the Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy category for Who Is America?, which saw him duping politicians, broadcasters and public figures, and his reaction was very … him. Not only did he say it was a "shame" that the HFPA overlooked the "amazing performances" of two of his targets, Dick Cheneyand Roy Moore (who sued Cohen for $95 million), but he went on to invite one of his nemeses, Palin, as his date to the Jan. 6 show.
"I appreciate the Hollywood Foreign Press for recognizing me, which luckily is something that none of the guests on the show did," Cohen quipped in his statement. "This is such a special honour for me as the HFPA are always among the first to really appreciate my ever evolving humour. I am humbled to be recognised among such a wonderful group of nominees, all of whom I admire. This show was a labour of love for over two years. It is a shame they overlooked the amazing performances by the rest of the cast, particularly Dick Cheney and Roy Moore. Meanwhile Ms Palin, despite being cut from the show, I hope you will accept my invitation to be my date for the ceremony."
Palin gave Cohen free publicity for his Showtime show before it premiered when she said that he had duped her in a "humiliating" interview, during which, she said, he claimed to be a handicapped U.S. military veteran. Showtime denied that Cohen pretended to be a vet - and we may never know because the interview never aired. Instead, Cohen gave Palin a credit in the finale - the title of "Special Publicity Consultant (Inadvertent)" - for giving his show free publicity.
Sacha Baron Cohen
Nominees
Golden Globes 2019
The nominees are in for next month's 76th annual Golden Globes! Yes, Little Monsters: Lady Gaga got a nod. And also yes, Comic-Con dwellers: "Black Panther" has been nominated for Best Movie - Drama.
"Vice" led the way for film, while "The Assassination of Gianna Versace: American Crime Story" collected the most chances for a trophy on the TV side of the business.
The 2019 Golden Globe Awards take place Sunday, Jan. 6 starting at 8/7c on NBC. Andy Samberg and Sandra Oh are set to host the ceremony.
For the complete list of nominations - Golden Globes 2019
Unveils Nominations
Writers Guild Awards
Just a few hours after the Golden Globes picked its top TV honorees of the year, the Writers Guild of America presented a significantly different playing field in its nominations for the upcoming WGA Awards - one where, uniquely to 2019, the overlap between top series nominees and best episodic scripts is pretty scant.
Nominees in the drama series category are The Americans, Better Call Saul, The Crown, The Handmaid's Tale and newcomer Succession. Of those five, Handmaid's Tale is the reigning winner and the only series to also get a nomination for episodic writing. Maybe nominating voters wanted to spread the wealth, because other drama series with episodic nominations are Narcos: Mexico, This Is Us, The Affair, Homeland and Ozark.
The lack of episodic noms for top comedy nominees are just as striking. Atlanta, Barry, GLOW, The Good Place and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel will vie for best comedy series. Only Barry, also nominated for best new series, received an episodic nomination for the HBO comedy's pilot. It will compete with Forever, Santa Clarita Diet, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Orange Is the New Black and, perhaps most surprisingly, the pilot for the ABC sitcom The Kids Are Alright.
Hot streaming properties The Haunting of Hill House and Homecoming join Barry in the new series category, as do Pose and Succession. The longform original category features just HBO telepics My Dinner With Herve and Paterno, as well as Hulu's Castle Rock. (The Hollywood Reporter columnist Marc Bernardin is one of the scribes credited on the latter.) And in the adapted longform category, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story will compete with The Looming Tower, Maniac and Sharp Objects.
The 2019 Writers Guild Awards will be handed out Sunday, Feb. 17, at the Beverly Hilton.
For the complete list of nominations - Writers Guild Awards
Ancient, Unknown Strain of Plague Found
Sweden
In a nearly 5,000-year-old tomb in Sweden, researchers have discovered the oldest-known strain of the notorious bacterium Yersinia pestis - the microbe responsible for humanity's perhaps most-feared contagion: the plague.
The finding suggests that the germ may have devastated settlements across Europe at the end of the Stone Age in what may have been the first major pandemic of human history. It could also rewrite some of what we know of ancient European history.
The finding came about as the researchers were analyzing publicly available databases of ancient DNA for cases in which infections might have claimed prehistoric victims. They focused on the previously excavated site of Frälsegården in Sweden. Previous analysis of a limestone tomb at the site found that an estimated 78 people were buried there, and they all had died within a 200-year period. The fact that many people died in a relatively short time in one place suggested they might have perished together in an epidemic, lead study author Nicolás Rascovan, a biologist at Aix-Marseille University in Marseille, France, told Live Science. The limestone tomb was dated to the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, the period when farming began.
The researchers discovered the previously unknown strain of plague in the remains of a woman at the Frälsegården site. Carbon dating suggested she died about 4,900 years ago during a period known as the Neolithic Decline, when Neolithic cultures throughout Europe mysteriously dwindled. [Photos: Stone Age Skulls Found on Wooden Stakes]
By comparing the newfound strain with known plague DNA, the scientists determined that the ancient sample was the closest known relative of the plague bacterium's most recent ancestor. The study researchers theorized that the ancient sample diverged from other plague strains about 5,700 years ago.
Sweden
Top 20
Global Concert Tours
The Top 20 Global Concert Tours ranks artists by average box office gross per city and includes the average ticket price for shows Worldwide. The list is based on data provided to the trade publication Pollstar by concert promoters and venue managers. Week of December 5, 2018:
1. Taylor Swift; $8,952,956; $125.59.
2. Jay-Z / Beyoncé; $6,935,409; $128.23.
3. Ed Sheeran; $6,002,329; $91.81.
4. U2; $4,976,018; $132.29.
5. Kenny Chesney; $4,253,658; $95.07.
6. Eagles; $3,976,285; $164.44.
7. Drake; $3,904,125; $115.48.
8. Bruno Mars; $3,590,211; $153.84.
9. Billy Joel; $3,542,401; $119.57.
10. Elton John; $3,234,940; $134.92.
11. Britney Spears; $3,207,192; $206.16.
12. Roger Waters; $2,603,628; $79.14.
13. Phish; $2,207,959; $67.08.
14. "Springsteen On Broadway"; $2,092,961; $509.58.
15. Phil Collins; $2,092,876; $150.65.
16. Justin Timberlake; $2,032,942; $111.89.
17. Foo Fighters; $1,970,566; $77.41.
18. Arctic Monkeys; $1,849,839; $74.94.
19. Journey / Def Leppard; $1,836,963; $103.07.
20. Fleetwood Mac; $1,660,489; $131.64.
Global Concert Tours
In Memory
Pete Shelley
Pete Shelley, the leader of the English punk rock band Buzzcocks, has died at the age of 63.
The singer, songwriter, and guitarist died on Thursday in Estonia, his country of residence, the band's management told the BBC.
Shelley passed away due to a suspected heart attack.
Buzzcocks, who date back to the Seventies, are best known for their 1978 hit "Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)", written by Shelley.
Shelley, a native of Leigh, formed Buzzcocks with former member Howard Devoto. Buzzcocks have often been compared to the Sex Pistols and billed as one of the many bands who sprouted from the group's historic 1976 concert in Manchester.
Buzzcocks went on hiatus and reformed several times, putting out nine studio albums in total, the latest of which came out in 2014.
Shelley also embraced a solo career and released six studio albums, including the groundbreaking Homosapien in 1981.
The song of the same name, released as a single, was banned by the BBC at the time of its debut due to an "explicit reference to gay sex" in its lyrics.
Shelley openly discussed his bisexuality, once telling Pitchfork that other punk bands "didn't seem to bat an eyelid" because "the idea of what people know, or the stereotype of a punk, hadn't been formed".
Shelley credited the genre for putting people "in the driver's seat", adding: "Don't worry about the fact that nobody's making good music. You only have yourselves to blame. You can go out and make it."
Pete Shelley
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