Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Lucy Mangan: Just One Night review - a dating show so awful you'll be screaming in agony (The Guardian)
Couples brave the lure of infidelity as they meet their ideal other halves in this unconvincing and artificial reality TV series.
Hadley Freeman: I wanted to be the next Nora Ephron, but my novel got stuck. Did failure teach me anything? (The Guardian)
Not writing a novel is hardly a tragedy, but it made me recalibrate the image I'd had of myself. Increasingly, I believe my biggest mistakes were not the mistakes themselves, but my framing of them as failures. Life is not a series of achievements to tick off a list, but a stream of unexpected meanderings, and any seemingly crucial benchmarks along the way are really just our own expectations. Even us failed novelists can get caught up in our own fictions. The truth is, even without the expected ending, you can still live happily ever after.
Suzanne Moore: Sorry, guys, you can't be an actor and moan about body image (The Guardian)
Richard Madden is the latest star to reveal the stress of having to shed weight and tone up for a role. But isn't that his job?
Alison Flood: Philip Pullman leads call for UK government action on ebook piracy (The Guardian)
Pullman calls piracy 'an offence against moral justice' as authors including Kazuo Ishiguro and Margaret Drabble issue warning to business secretary Greg Clark.
Mark Chandler: Joanne Harris calls on publishers to take online pirates to court (The Bookseller)
Joanne Harris has called on publishers to haul online pirates through the courts and set a legal precedent after authors rallied against website Ebooks Bike for allegedly allowing thousands of books to be downloaded for free.
Jonathan Jones: "From Warhol to minimalism: how painting by numbers revolutionised art" (The Guardian)
Designer Dan Robbins's concept was inadvertently a parody of 50s modernist reverence, and brought abstract painting techniques into middle-American homes.
Jonathan Jones: "Guardian culture critics: 'Art entangles itself with the raw reality of our world'" (The Guardian)
The Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones and its deputy music editor, Laura Snapes, discuss the life of reviewing in the digital age.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Bruce
Anecdotes
• David F. Day was the editor of a Democratic paper in Colorado in the late 1800s and supported the silver standard. Francis E. Leupp, a journalist who was a Republican and who supported the gold standard, visited him. In addition to being a newspaper editor, Mr. Day was also busy as the Indian Agent for the Southern Ute Indians. Because he was so busy, Mr. Day allowed Mr. Leupp to write the editorial for the week of his visit and ordered his newspaper to print whatever Mr. Leupp wrote. Mr. Leupp decided to take advantage of Mr. Day's generosity by writing "A Confession Wrung from Conscience," an editorial piece ostensibly written by Mr. Day, but which totally reversed Mr. Day's position, arguing in favor of the gold standard instead of the silver standard. Because Mr. Day lived in a silver-mining area where arguing in favor of the gold standard was both unpopular and likely to be dangerous, he was forced to hide his family until he could explain the cruel practical joke in the next week's edition of his newspaper.
• Many people in the frontier days had a rough sense of humor. A Methodist preacher asked Texas cattleman Brit Bailey for a place to sleep overnight in his house. Mr. Bailey agreed, providing that the preacher obeyed the "house rules." Shortly afterward, Mr. Bailey pulled a gun on the preacher, then said that the house rules were for the preacher to strip naked, climb up on a table, and dance. The preacher had no choice but to obey. Later that night, Mr. Bailey turned his back on the preacher, and when he turned around, he found himself looking at a gun in the preacher's hand. The preacher then ordered Mr. Bailey to strip naked, climb up on a table and dance. Mr. Bailey had no choice but to obey. (Later, the two men became friends.)
• Comic singer Anna Russell, who was born British, became a naturalized American citizen. She was very nervous about taking her citizenship test, despite having studied for months. (Studying history was rather odd. In English schools, she had studied the War of Independence and learned that the Americans were the bad guys and the English were the good guys, but now she had to learn it the other way around.) An American official made her even more nervous when he looked at her ominously and said that he hoped she had studied hard. The official asked her to write a sentence in English, and then he asked her who was the first President of the United States. Finally, he signed her citizenship papers. A shocked Ms. Russell asked, "Is that all?" The American official replied, "Yes, but I had you rattled there, didn't I?"
• When conductor Arturo Toscanini first dined at the home of Samuel Chotzinoff, several people wanted to be invited so they could meet the famed conductor. Mr. Chotzinoff's sister-in-law was so eager to see Maestro Toscanini in person that she agreed to serve as a maid. During the dinner, Toscanini was very favorably impressed with her beauty. At a later dinner, Mr. Chotzinoff decided to play a trick on Toscanini. This time, his sister-in-law blackened her teeth and turned herself into a frump. Near the end of the meal, she sat on Toscanini's lap and kissed him. The Maestro was horrified at first, but once the trick was explained and he knew the identity of the "maid," he was delighted with the trick.
• At the General Electric laboratories, old-time engineers used to play a practical joke on new engineers by telling them to frost the inside of an electric bulb so it would diffuse more light. The new engineers would try to do this, but fail, and then the old-time engineers would explain that such a thing was impossible. However, the old-time engineers played the practical joke on a new engineer named Marvin Pipkin. Mr. Pipkin amazed the old-time engineers by becoming the first person ever to frost the inside of an electric bulb.
• Opera singer Leo Slezak frequently crossed the Atlantic to travel to the Metropolitan Opera in New York. When his piano accompanist Professor Oscar Dachs became seasick, Mr. Slezak decided to play a joke and send for Professor Dachs to accompany him as he practiced singing. Several messengers went to Professor Sachs and returned, saying that the Professor was ill. Mr. Slezak stopped the joke after a messenger reported that the Professor had used language that a gentleman should not use and had thrown an ashtray at him.
• Mark Twain was at the races outside London, where he met a friend who had lost all his pocket money gambling and who asked if Mr. Twain would buy him a ticket back to London. "I'm nearly broke myself but I'll tell you what I'll do," Mr. Twain replied. "You can ride under my seat and I'll hide you with my legs." The friend agreed, but unknown to the friend, Mr. Twain bought two train tickets. When the train inspector came by to collect the tickets, Mr. Twain handed him the two tickets, then said, "My friend is a little eccentric and likes to ride under the seat."
• In Richard Wagner's Siegfried is a scene in which Siegfried approaches the sleeping Brünnhilde, removes her breastplate, and sees the words "Das ist kein Mann." The tenor Alberto Remedios tells a story about a production in which Siegfried approached a mischievous sleeping Brünnhilde. When Siegfried removed her breastplate, he saw the words "Do not disturb."
• At Cornell, Hugh Troy once advertised that the annual freshman class picture would be taken outside White Hall. At the advertised time, all the freshmen stood outside White Hall while the photographer stood ready to take their picture. However, when the photographer ordered the freshmen to say "Cheese," that was the signal for Hugh's friends to drop buckets of water onto the freshmen from the roof.
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
JD is on vacation.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Goofed off and went to the LA Times Festival of Books at USC.
Fans Raise Nearly $100,000
'Queer Eye'
"Queer Eye" fans have rallied around Jess Guilbeaux after a recent episode when they learned she was forced to drop out of college because she could not afford it.
Before she amassed more than 67,000 followers on Instagram, Guilbeaux spoke openly on "Queer Eye" about being estranged from her family after she revealed she was gay. She said it left her financially unable to pursue her dreams of getting a college degree.
When she came out as a lesbian at 16, her adoptive parents kicked her out of the house. Despite no family support, Guilbeaux eventually made it to the University of Kansas to study computer science. But the pressure of going to school and earning a living collided - and left her with little choice.
While Guilbeaux learned to fend for herself, her family faded from her life. Until she was featured on Netflix's "Queer Eye" - a show that offers more than just makeovers and home renovations. The Fab Five reunited her with her sister Jenice and the niece she'd never met.
Though she never asked for it, a "Queer Eye" fan launched a GoFundMe page to send Guilbeaux back to school. It's reached nearly $100,000.
'Queer Eye'
Terms Of Service Violations
Twitter
Women's March, a women's rights advocacy group, is urging Twitter to suspend President Donald Trump's (R-National Embarrassment) Twitter account in response to Trump's recent sharing of a video depicting Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar interspersed with footage of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Newsweek reports. Trump shared the video on Friday and again on Saturday, captioning the video "WE WILL NEVER FORGET!"
In addition to posting and retweeting the video, Trump pinned it to the top of his feed for a period of time as well. The tweet now remains, but it is no longer pinned.
"@realDonaldTrump is sharing propaganda videos trafficking in hate speech and inciting real violence against @IlhanMN. We're calling on @jack to suspend him from @Twitter. Seriously. Add your name here," the Women's March tweeted from the organization's verified account. The tweet includes a link to a petition calling for Trump to be suspended from both Facebook and Twitter.
Trump's Democratic opponents, notably Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and standout freshman congresswoman Representative Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez,vocally condemned the video, characterizing it as an explicit attack by a sitting president on a member of Congress.
This is not the first time that public pressure has been applied to social media companies in an effort to curtail the president's behavior online. Twitter in January of last year, without mentioning Trump by name, made an effort to explain their position on enforcing their terms of service when it comes to the unique and unprecedented challenge of dealing with world leaders. The company made it clear that there was a different set of standards applied to world leaders as compared to more ordinary users.
Twitter
ATA Says It Will Fight
WGA
On Day Two of the battle between the WGA and Hollywood's talent agencies, the Association of Talent Agencies said today that "our resolve has never been stronger," and that "we'll keep fighting as a united front…against the WGA leadership's threat to our agency business operations."
In a message to her members, ATA executive director Karen Stuart accused guild leaders of having embarked on a course of action that "has thrown the entire entertainment ecosystem into an abyss, affecting stakeholders across the spectrum." The agencies, she said, "will not be a willing participant to any further chaos. That's the guild's plan."
The WGA implemented a new Agency Code of Conduct yesterday and ordered its members to fire all their agents who refuse to sign it. All the major agencies have refused, and have been flooded by a wave of e-firings from their writer-clients.
As a counter-measure, ATA executive director Karen Stuart said that the ATA board of directors has adopted its own Agency Standards for Client Representation "as a voluntary model for agencies to govern their relationship with their writer clients," now that the WGA's old franchise agreement has expired.
The WGA, however, scoffed at the offer. "Among other unacceptable proposals, the agencies insist on continuing their major conflicts of interest," the guild said. "They insist on continuing to produce and be our employers. Their 'offer' on packaging is to share 1% of their packaging fee with writers."
WGA
Hits $900 Million at Box Office
'Bohemian Rhapsody'
It has been over five months since "Bohemian Rhapsody" was first released in theaters, but it is still hitting box office milestones, as it crossed $900 million worldwide on Sunday.
Though the Queen biopic finished its North American run weeks ago with a $216 million domestic total, it is still bringing in moviegoers in Asia. In Japan, the film has now earned $114 million, while Chinese audiences finally got to see the film when it hit theaters last month. While there aren't as many Queen fans in China as there are in Japan and Korea, the market has added $13.9 million to push "BoRap"'s overseas total to $685 million.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" ranks sixth among all 2018 releases in global gross, besting hits like "Venom" and "Deadpool 2." It is the highest grossing music biopic of all time, and is also the only film in the top 10 that is not connected to a franchise. It also added four Oscars to its list of achievements, including a Best Actor win for lead star Rami Malek.
Though it was released before distributor 20th Century Fox was officially merged with Disney, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was prominently featured at the latter studio's investor meeting announcing the programming for the launch of the upcoming Disney+ streaming service. In the studio's 83-year run as an independent studio, "Bohemian Rhapsody" sits fourth on Fox's all-time box office charts, sitting only behind "Avatar," "Titanic" and "Star Wars: Episode I."
'Bohemian Rhapsody'
Man Sues Parents
Porn Collection
A man who briefly moved into his parents' Ottawa County home following a divorce in 2016 expected his mom and dad to deliver the rest of his belongings to him when he moved to Indiana months later.
But he soon discovered what was missing: 12 boxes of pornographic films and magazines, a vast collection he estimates was worth about $29,000, according to the Associated Press. Some of the titles included "Frisky Business" and "Big Bad Grannys."
Now the 40-year-old man is suing his parents for tossing out his porn collection. The man, who was not identified, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Michigan last week seeking about $87,000 - triple the collection's estimated worth.
The Muncie, Ind. man initially tried to get local police involved in the dispute, but the Ottawa County Prosecutor's Office would not press charges against the man's parents, the AP reported.
The lawsuit includes an email from the man's father, explaining why the parents ditched the porn. "I did you a big favor by getting rid of all this stuff," the father wrote his son.
Porn Collection
Claims Congress 'Not Smart Enough'
Sarah
White House press secretary head liar Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-Psalm 36:3) has claimed members of Congress are not "smart enough" to understand Donald Trump's (R-Corrupt) finances after Democrats formally requested the president's tax returns.
When Fox News host Chris Wallace asked whether Mr Trump will order the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to defy Congress's request, Ms Sanders refused to give a clear answer.
She instead went on to criticise congressional Democrats.
"This is all about political partisanship," Ms Sanders said.
"This is a dangerous, dangerous road and frankly Chris, I don't think Congress, particularly not this group of Congressman and woman, is smart enough to look through the thousands of pages that I would assume president Trump's taxes will be."
Sarah
For A Few Hours
Facebook
Facebook and its subsidiaries Instagram and WhatsApp experienced widespread outages on Sunday for the second time in the past month (and the third time this year), with issues reported starting at around 6:30 a.m. ET and extending until around 9:00 a.m. ET.
Per Bloomberg, Facebook and Instagram domains ceased to be accessible by users during that time period, while Messenger and WhatsApp were also non-functional. In a statement to the news agency, the company offered few details:
Earlier today, some people may have experienced trouble connecting to the family of apps. The issue has since been resolved; we're sorry for any inconvenience.
Users worldwide appeared to be impacted, with Bloomberg noting that Twitter users everywhere from the U.S. to Israel and Thailand were complaining about the outage.
The last time this happened in mid-March, Facebook blamed a "server configuration change" that resulted in an unprecedented, cascading series of issues persisting for over 24 hours. As the New York Times noted, even the platform's bug reporting system became inaccessible, a black eye for a service that (at least in theory) is never supposed to go down.
Facebook
'Embellished Dark Source Of Unending Creation'
Powehi
The black hole that starred in the first ever photo to be taken of its kind has been given a name.
The now famous swirling void will be known as Powehi, a Hawaiian word which has been bestowed by a language professor.
And the name's meaning, chosen by University of Hawaii-Hilo Hawaiian Professor Larry Kimura, is as fittingly dramatic as the picture and work that produced it.
It means "the adorned fathomless dark creation" or "embellished dark source of unending creation" and comes from the Kumulipo, an 18th century Hawaiian creation chant. Po is a profound dark source of unending creation, while wehi, honored with embellishments, is one of the chant's descriptions of po, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported.
A Hawaiian name was justified because the project included two Hawaii telescopes, astronomers said.
Powehi
Weekend Box Office
'Shazam!'
A rush of newcomers couldn't shake "Shazam!" from the top spot, as the superhero comedy led the box office for the second straight weekend with $25.1 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Lionsgate's "Hellboy" reboot, the animated Laika Studios release "Missing Link," the college romance "After" and even the long-delayed "Mary Magdalene," originally to be released by the Weinstein Co., all opened in theaters. But the strongest new release of them all was, predictably, the Will Packer-produced one: "Little."
The body-swap comedy "Little" came in second with $15.5 million for Universal Pictures. Made for just $20 million, "Little" is just the most recent profit-maker for Packer, the "Girls Trip" producer.
Lionsgate and Millennium's "Hellboy" had been expected by many to vie with "Shazam!" on the weekend. But on the heels of terrible reviews (just 15% "fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes), it flopped with $12 million against a $50 million budget.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Where available, the latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included.
1. "Shazam!" $25.1 million ($35.9 million international).
2. "Little," $15.5 million ($1.9 million international).
3. "Hellboy," $12 million ($10.1 million international).
4. "Pet Sematary," $10 million ($12.6 million international).
5. "Dumbo," $9.2 million ($22 million international).
6. "Captain Marvel," $8.6 million ($8 million international).
7. "Us," $6.9 million ($4.4 million international).
8. "After," $6.2 million ($11.7 million international).
9. "Missing Link," $5.8 million ($8.9 million international).
10. "The Best of Enemies," $2 million.
'Shazam!'
In Memory
Bibi Andersson
Swedish actress Bibi Andersson, best known for her roles in legendary director Ingmar Bergman's films, died on Sunday aged 83, her daughter Jenny Grede Dahlstrand told AFP.
Andersson is perhaps best known for starring in many of Bergman classics including "The Seventh Seal" (1957), "Wild Strawberries" (1957) and "Persona" (1966).
She received several awards including the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin international film festival in 1963 for her role in Vilgot Sjoman's "The Mistress" (1962).
From early film credits in 1951, she continued working and starring in movies until 2009, when she suffered a stroke paralysing one side of her body.
Jan Holmberg, CEO of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, told AFP that although Andersson came to be extensively linked to Bergman, she was very much an artist in her own right.
The media, and Bergman himself, often referred to people he worked with as "his" actors and actresses. Andersson's response was: "I'm my own."
"And that's exactly what she was," Holmberg said.
Bibi Andersson
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