Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Tom Danehy: What gifts does Santa Tom have in his big sack? (Tucson Weekly)
Here's my Christmas gift list. You're all welcome:
New UA football coach Rich Rodriguez-A clock with a loud-ass alarm that goes off after the Wildcat players have participated in 20 hours of offseason workouts each week. The only thing worse than a team with a losing record is a team with a losing record that's on NCAA probation!
Mark Shields: Endorsements Matter on Checks, Not for President (Creators Syndicate)
If the individual giving the endorsement is in fact a brother, sister, child or spouse of the endorsee's opponent on the ballot, it deserves our attention. In 2008, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was the father of two voting-age children - a son who was not speaking to the candidate and a daughter who was volunteering for Obama. His campaign was never able to explain this non-support.
Susan Estrich: The New Chelsea Clinton (Creators Syndicate)
Some people seek out celebrity. Others are born into it. What troubles me, frankly, is when parents use their children to make celebrities of themselves (you can fill in the names here) or push their children to take on the trappings of celebrity that they aren't able to handle (another easy fill-in-the-blank exercise). But Clinton is no longer a child, and she will always be a celebrity. The question that matters now that she is an adult is how she will use it.
TABATHA SOUTHEY: Graded on the Cain Curve, everyone looks better - except Newt (Globe and Mail (Canada)
I refuse to believe that if … Herman Cain drops out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination …, his support will fall to Newt Gingrich. I prefer to think that, instead, each of us is just going to get a little more popular. In fact, there'll be an infinitesimal increase in popularity of everything everywhere: Men who've never had a date will suddenly get a date. Someone somewhere will order the tapioca pudding. One Segway will be sold. Three more people will get AOL accounts.
Paul Krugman: Unpivoting Obama (New York Times)
If this ends up being a class warfare election - not really, of course, but an election in which inequality and jobs prevail - the Democrats will have a good chance of coming out on top.
Reasons to Love New York: 11. Because Paul Krugman Didn't Keep His Calm (NY Magazine)
Before Paul Krugman joined the New York Times op-ed page, it was a genteel place.
Slade Sohmer: Should Pepper Spray Be TIME's Person of the Year? (Hypervocal.com)
What started out as a joke has become an increasingly real proposition: Even though it's not a "person," we must now begin to debate whether Pepper Spray should grace TIME's most discussed cover.
Farhad Manjoo: Don't Support Your Local Bookseller (Slate)
Buying books on Amazon is better for authors, better for the economy, and better for you.
John Lennon: 'I was sick of White Christmas' - a classic interview from the vaults (Guardian)
In our latest visit to the archives of Rock's Backpages - the world's leading collection of vintage music journalism - we visit John Lennon and Yoko Ono in New York in 1971, just as they're recording a song for Christmas, with the help of Phil Spector. This account of events by Richard Williams was first published in Uncut magazine in 1998
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 Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
BadtotheboneBob
Interviewer of the Year Award
Barbara Walters, hands down... for telling the collective Kardashians...
"You don't really act; you don't sing; you don't dance. You don't have any -- forgive me -- any talent,"
I, myself, would have left out the "forgive me" part, but I can understand Ms. Walters wanting to be polite whilst slamming them to their very faces for a national TV audience. Bravo!
BttbB
Thanks, B2tbBob!
Bosko Suggests
10 Largest Cities
10 Largest Cities Within the Arctic Circle
Thanks, Bosko!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
The local TV weatherfolk said there was only a 10% chance of rain, but since ants were invading the bathroom, decided not to take Jo the (lucky) lizard outside. It was overcast, but not rain-cloudy.
Had a bunch of errands to run, and Trader Joe's was the last stop. Pulling into the parking lot we noticed the sky was getting dark, but it was also getting late.
We were in the store about 10 minutes, and walked out into a driving rain with hail. Lots of hail.
It's about 3 miles from home, but with the storm, it took over 20 minutes. And it kept hailing.
It was an icy, slippery slush, and the windshield looked like we'd been in a snow storm. And it was loud.
By the time we got home it was hailing so hard it slammed the garage door shut behind us.
We had enough time to unpack the car, grab cameras and take enough pictures that we became bored with it, and it was still hailing.
Eight hours later, the hail in the backyard still hasn't melted.
Damn freaky storm.
In a perfect world, Bill Hicks
would be celebrating his 50th birthday today.
The Konformist - Bill Hicks Quotes
'America's Got Talent' Judge
Howard Stern
Howard Stern will be joining the judges' panel on "America's Got Talent," and the NBC summer talent show will uproot itself from Los Angeles to accommodate the New York-based shock jock, the network said Thursday.
NBC confirmed weeks-old rumors of Stern's selection to join fellow "Talent" judges Howie Mandel and Sharon Osbourne. Nick Cannon remains host.
Stern, whose daily radio show airs on Sirius XM, is replacing Piers Morgan, who left "Talent" after last season to free up his busy schedule. Last winter, Morgan launched a weeknight interview program on CNN.
"Talent" bills itself as TV's only such competition show that is open to any age and any talent. Auditions for season seven began in October in major cities nationwide. But now, with Stern aboard, production of the live broadcast of the show will relocate to New York.
Howard Stern
Mardi Gras
Will Ferrell
Comedian Will Ferrell has been named the god of wine for next year's Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
The Bacchus krewe of the popular Carnival season parade announced the choice Thursday.
Ferrell is currently in New Orleans shooting the movie "Dog Fight." He joins a list of recent Bacchus monarchs that includes Andy Garcia, Val Kilmer, James Gandolfini, Michael Keaton and Nicolas Cage.
Other comedians who have reigned as the god of wine over the years include Bob Hope, Phil Harris, Billy Crystal, Jim Belushi, Drew Carey and Dom DeLuise.
Will Ferrell
Cancelled After Nine Years
"Extreme Makeover"
Sorry, fans of inspirational home-renovation stories: "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" is coming to an end.
ABC has decided to end the series' run after its ninth season wraps up in January. The show debuted in 2003 as a spin-off of "Extreme Makeover."
Its final episode -- the series' 200th -- will air on January 13, and will feature the team building seven homes in seven days for tornado victims in Joplin, Mo.
The handwriting had been on the tastefully-remodeled wall for some time. The show lost more than a third of its audience this season, thanks in part to a move to Friday. Between the start of the season and mid-November, it averaged a 1.5 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic. The 34.9 percent audience loss -- since the same period in 2010 -- made it No. 4 on TheWrap's list of the biggest ratings losers of the fall.
"Extreme Makeover"
Manuscript Sets Record At Auction
Charlotte Bronte
An unpublished Charlotte Bronte manuscript has sold for a record 690,850 pounds ($1.1 million) at auction, more than double the expected price, Sotheby's auction house said Thursday.
The Young Men's Magazine, Number 2, was written in 1830 - when the author was 14, 17 years before she wrote "Jane Eyre." It is set in Glass Town, the earliest fictional world created by the Bronte siblings.
Sotheby's had predicted the manuscript would sell for between 200,000 and 300,000 pounds, but said Thursday the final sale price set new auction records for Bronte and for a literary work by any of the Bronte sisters.
The auction house said that the Musee des Lettres et Manuscrits in Paris placed the winning bid following "a tense bidding battle." The museum will exhibit the work in January, it added.
Charlotte Bronte
Loud Commercials
TV
Shush, already. That's the message the Federal Communications Commission is sending with new rules that force broadcast, cable and satellite companies to turn down the volume on blaring TV commercials.
On Tuesday, the FCC passed a set of regulations that will prevent commercials from being louder than the shows around them. It's all part of the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (or CALM) Act, which President Obama signed into law last December. The rules go into effect a year from now. Companies that don't comply will face unspecified FCC action.
Thunderous television ads have annoyed viewers for years. The FCC says people have grumbled about the issue for at least a half century. But since 2002 - thanks in part to all those clangorous car commercials, earsplitting electronics ads and booming beer pitches - loud advertisements have been one of the top complaints the FCC receives.
In a recent analysis, DG found that some ads were 10 times as loud as the programs they interrupted.
TV
Painting Nets $782,680 At Auction
William Powell Frith
A long-lost Victorian painting by William Powell Frith sold for 505,250 pounds ($782,680) at a London auction, Christie's auction house said Thursday.
"The Derby Day" is an early version of one of the era's most famous pictures - Frith's teeming, picaresque image of the crowds at an 1850s horse race, from a rich family in their carriage to gamblers, acrobats and prostitutes.
The finished painting hangs in the Tate Britain gallery in London. The 15-by-35 inch (39 centimeter by 91 centimeter) oil-on-canvas sketch sold by Christie's is Frith's first complete version of the scene.
The piece had been hanging in a modest New England beach house for decades before a friend of the owner suggested it might be worth something.
Peter Brown, Christie's director of Victorian pictures, had said before the sale that the vendor, who is in his 60s and wished to remain anonymous, believes his parents bought the painting some time before World War II, when Victorian art was often dismissed as garish and sentimental.
William Powell Frith
Up In Smoke
The Netherlands
The reputation of the Netherlands as the go-to country for a legal joint will begin to vanish like a puff of smoke next year as sales to foreigners of cannabis and hashish in coffee shops are banned.
The Dutch government has been clamping down on the sale of soft drugs since 2007 because of gang-related crime and concern about the risk to health, particularly as stronger forms of cannabis have been introduced.
The new rules, which will first take effect in the south and gradually be extended countrywide, limit sales of cannabis to residents of the Netherlands who must enroll as members of a coffee shop, the minister said.
The rules will come into effect from January 1, 2012, but will not be enforced until May 1, starting in the three southern provinces where drug tourism is most common and regarded as a problem by many local residents.
The rest of the country, including Amsterdam, whose drugs scene is a tourist magnet, will enforce the new rules from January 1, 2013.
The Netherlands
Takes Appeal To US Supreme Court
Phil Specter
A lawyer for imprisoned music legend Phil Spector is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review his murder conviction, arguing his constitutional rights were violated by the trial judge.
Attorney Dennis Riordan contends that Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler became a witness for the prosecution by offering his opinion on an expert's testimony.
The filing was expected to reach the court Friday. It cites the prosecution's use of the judge's videotaped comments and his picture during prosecution summations.
The same arguments were made to state appellate justices, who refused to consider them because of a belated filing. They upheld Spector's second-degree murder conviction in the death of actress Lana Clarkson.
Phil Specter
Crime Reporter Arrested In Corruption Inquiry
Rupert
The former crime editor for the News of the World tabloid was arrested Thursday in Britain's phone hacking scandal, and authorities announced that CNN journalist Piers Morgan would appear before the U.K.'s media ethics inquiry.
Police investigating wrongdoing at the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid did not release crime editor Lucy Panton's name, saying only that a 37-year-old female was arrested before dawn. But British media reported that Panton was the person arrested, a fact confirmed by a former News of the World employee to The Associated Press. She was later released on bail.
More than a dozen former journalists working for News of the World have been arrested in the phone hacking scandal that prompted Murdoch to shut down the tabloid in July and forced several senior Murdoch lieutenants to resign. There have also been about half a dozen other arrests in relation to corrupt payments made to police officers for news tips.
Morgan, the former tabloid editor-turned-celebrity interviewer, replaced Larry King at CNN. He also edited the News of the World between 1994 and 1995 before moving over to the Daily Mirror. He can expect to be quizzed on allegations that he condoned phone hacking while working at the Mirror and that he personally listened in on illegally intercepted messages.
Panton, who is married to a Scotland Yard detective, had high-level contact with the London police force, meeting with then-Assistant Commissioner John Yates and her former boss, News of the World editor Colin Myler, for dinner in November 2009.
Rupert
'Lean on Me' Actor Arrested
Jermaine "Huggy" Hopkins
Authorities say "Lean on Me" actor Jermaine "Huggy" Hopkins has been arrested in Phoenix for trying to buy 200 pounds (91 kilograms) of marijuana from an undercover officer.
Sheriff's detectives say the 38-year-old Hopkins was taken into custody Tuesday. Phoenix TV station KSAZ reports that detectives found 200 pounds of marijuana in his SUV and $100,000 cash.
Authorities later searched an Avondale apartment listed in Hopkins' name. They say they found another 100 pounds (45 kilograms) of marijuana.
Hopkins starred in the 1989 movie "Lean on Me" at 15 and has appeared on several TV shows.
Jermaine "Huggy" Hopkins
Criticizes OWS, NYPD
Writers Guild
The Writers Guild of America-East has written an open letter to the Occupy Wall Street movement and New York Police Department criticizing protesters who dismantled a "Law and Order: SVU" set designed to replicate the occupation, and police who then halted shooting on the show.
Yes, that's the WGAE complaining about OWS and the NYPD over "L&O: SVU." Not since the WPA have so many enjoyed so much alphabet soup.
The eastern branch of the union, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, says it has "strongly and actively supported the Occupy Wall Street movement from its inception," and that it was frustrated that protesters dismantled a set last week, given that the show is written by union writers and that union crews work on it.
"The demonstrators' actions were as misguided and inappropriate as the City of New York's response -- revoking '
Added the WGAE: "We continue to support Occupy Wall Street's aims and in the tradition of a city with a long history of upholding the right of free, peaceful speech for all, urge both the members of OWS and the police to treat last week's occurrence as an isolated incident, vowing that it not be repeated."
Writers Guild
1 In 2 People Are Poor
Census
Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans - nearly 1 in 2 - have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.
The latest census data depict a middle class that's shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.
"Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses, they are considered too 'rich' to qualify," said Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in poverty.
"The reality is that prospects for the poor and the near poor are dismal," he said. "If Congress and the states make further cuts, we can expect the number of poor and low-income families to rise for the next several years."
Census
Violated Civil Rights
Joe Arpaio
The federal government issued a scathing report Thursday that outlines how Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office has committed a wide range of civil rights violations against Latinos, including a pattern of racial profiling and discrimination and carrying out heavy-handed immigration patrols based on racially charged citizen complaints.
The Justice Department's conclusions in the civil probe mark the federal government's harshest rebuke of a national political fixture who has risen to prominence for his immigration crackdowns and became coveted endorsement among candidates in the GOP presidential field.
Apart from the civil rights probe, a federal grand jury also has been investigating Arpaio's office on criminal abuse-of-power allegations since at least December 2009 and is specifically examining the investigative work of the sheriff's anti-public corruption squad.
The civil rights report said federal authorities will continue to investigate complaints of deputies using excessive force against Latinos, whether the sheriff's office failed to provide adequately police services in Hispanic communities and a large number of sex-crimes cases that were assigned to the agency but weren't followed up on or investigated at all.
The report took the sheriff's office to task for launching immigration patrols, known as "sweeps," based on complaints that Latinos were merely gathering near a business without committing crimes. Federal authorities single out Arpaio himself and said his office, known as MCSO, has no clear policies to guard against the violations, even after he changed some of his top aides earlier this year.
Joe Arpaio
Religious Sanctimony, Politics & Cancer
Pink Bibles
The Southern Baptist-owned LifeWay Christian Resources has ceased production and sale of its pink Bibles, which it was selling in order to raise funds for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation.
The foundation is famous for its pink ribbons that adorn thousands of products and various fundraising efforts, including a marathon. Lifeway Christian Resources was donating $1 of each sale from the "Here's Hope Breast Cancer Bible" to the group. The Bible was for sale at major market retailers, including Walmart.
However, LifeWay pulled all copies of the pink Holman Christian Standard Bible from store shelves after learning that "some of Komen's affiliates were giving funds to Planned Parenthood," Lifeway President and CEO Thomas S. Rainer said on the company's website.
The Komen foundation responded by saying that all funds from the Bible sales would go toward breast cancer programs. LifeWay Communications Director Marty King said his group is considering options for repackaging the pink Bibles for other uses after the recall is complete.
Pink Bibles
Unexplained Shower
Apples
More than 100 apples mysteriously rained down upon a small British town on Monday night. The still-unexplained apple shower left 20 yards of city streets and car windshields covered in the cascading fruit just after the daily rush hour.
The news immediately brought up comparisons to biblical tales of raining frogs and whether such reported freaks of nature actually occurred. In this instance, no one has officially confirmed when, how or if the apple storm truly took place as described.
However, Jim Dale, senior meteorologist from the British Weather Services, told the London Telegraph: "The weather we have at the moment is very volatile and we probably have more to come. Essentially these events are caused when a vortex of air, kind of like a mini tornado, lifts things off the ground rising up into the atmosphere until the air around it causes them to fall to earth again."
But regardless of the ultimate explanation, the apple storm is no stranger other confirmed, highly unusual forms of precipitation. The BBC offers a roster of pertinent examples.
Apples
In Memory
Joe Simon
Joe Simon, who along with Jack Kirby co-created Captain America and was one of the comic book industry's most revered writers, artists and editors, has died. He was 98.
Simon's family relayed word of his death Thursday, posting a short statement on Facebook and telling The Associated Press through a spokesman that the 98-year-old Simon died Wednesday night in New York City after a brief illness.
"Joe was one of a kind," said Steve Saffel of Titan Books, a Simon friend who worked with him on his recent autobiography, "Joe Simon, My Life In Comics."
Saffel said that Simon, born in Rochester, N.Y., in 1913, "lived life on his terms and created incredible things in the process. It was a privilege to know him and to call him my friend."
Among his creations was a partnership with comic book artist and illustrator Jack Kirby. The duo worked hand-in-glove for years and from their fertile imaginations sprang a trove of characters, heroes, villains and misfits for several comic book companies in their Golden Age of the 1940s, including Timely, the forerunner of today's Marvel Comics; National Periodicals, the forerunner of DC; and Fawcett, among others.
The characters the two created included the Newsboy Legion, the Boy Commandos and scores more, including Blue Bolt.
"Blue Bolt was the first strip Jack and I worked on together, beginning in 1940. He was a science fiction swashbuckler I created for Curtis Publishing, the company that put out the Saturday Evening Post," Simon told The Associated Press earlier this year. "They had decided to jump on the comic book bandwagon. Jack joined me with the second issue. Like Captain America, Blue Bolt got his powers from an injection, long before the baseball players were doing it."
For Timely, the duo created Captain America, debuting on the cover of "Captain America Comics" No. 1 in December 1940 with the champion of liberty throwing a solid right-hook at Adolph Hitler, an entire year before the United States entered World War II.
"Jack and I read the newspapers, and knew what was going on over in Europe. And there he was - Adolf Hitler, with his ridiculous moustache, high-pitched ranting and goose-stepping followers. He was the perfect bad guy, much better than anything we could have made up, so what we needed was to create his ultimate counterpart," Simon told AP.
Mark Evanier, a comic industry historian and Jack Kirby biographer, noted that Simon, besides being able to write and draw, also knew how to edit comics.
"Joe himself was the first great real editor who brought to comics skills he'd learned elsewhere and had some perception of how to put a magazine together and how to make a professional looking publication," Evanier told The AP on Thursday. "He had some business acumen. He knew how to talk to publishers, he knew how to make deals."
He also knew the market, Evanier said, noting that Simon, along with Kirby, plunged head first into creating horror, crime, humor and romance comics in the aftermath of World War II.
Simon said earlier this year that creating the romance comics was a high point for him and Kirby because they "negotiated to own half of the property," something that had been an uncertain prospect in the industry.
Simon is survived by two sons, three daughters and eight grandchildren.
Joe Simon
In Memory
Russell Hoban
Russell Hoban, the prolific fantasy and children's author perhaps best known for "Riddley Walker," a post-apocalyptic novel that relied on a language he created, has died, his publisher said Thursday. He was 86.
The former illustrator, painter and decorated World War II veteran passed away in London on Tuesday night, Bloomsbury Publishing said. The cause of death was not immediately available.
"Russell Hoban was a complete original," said Bill Swainson, his editor at Bloomsbury. "People who only read his adult fiction don't know he was also one of the great children's writers of our time."
Hoban was born in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, but moved to London in 1969. He attended the Philadelphia School of Industrial Art before serving in the U.S. Army as an infantryman in Europe in World War II. He was awarded the Bronze Star in 1945.
Upon his return to the United States after the war, he worked at various jobs before launching a career as a freelance illustrator in 1956 and working as a copywriter. His paintings were occasionally used as cover portraits on major magazines.
Hoban started writing children's books a few years later, eventually writing more than 50, including "The Mouse and His Child" and his series of books dealing with a badger named Frances.
Hoban turned to adult fiction in the 1970s, writing several novels before producing "Riddley Walker," the work many regard as his masterpiece, in 1980.
The novel is set 2,000 years in the future after a nuclear war has destroyed much of the world. The book relies on a language Hoban created, based on English, that characterizes the near-death of the human spirit.
Critics regard this tale as perhaps the high point of Hoban's long career, but his works remained popular as he produced a steady stream of novels, many with supernatural and science fiction elements.
Hoban's first marriage ended in divorce. Swainson said the author is survived by his wife Gundula and his children and grandchildren.
Russell Hoban
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