Recommended Reading
from Bruce
What's the Greatest Gift Your Mother Ever Gave You?
'Real Simple' readers reveal the most precious of presents.
Rex W. Huppke: Facts, 360 B.C.-A.D. 2012 (Chicago Tribune)
In memoriam: After years of health problems, Facts has finally died.
Marc Dion: The Ding Dongs and Ho Hos of Our Masters (Creators Syndicate)
I have become an oppressed peasant. I became one earlier this week, when I found out that the Hostess company was in danger of bankruptcy and Secret Service agents were, uh, partying with Colombian whores.
Susan Estrich: How Dumb Can You Be? (Creators Syndicate)
I went to a strip club once. OK, maybe it was twice. The guys were going; I was curious.
Lisa Belkin: My 5th Grader Was Groped By TSA (Huffington Post)
A mother has to stand and watch as her 5th grader is marched through the terminal by armed guards, put in a private examination room, then poked and prodded around his groin.
EMILY ASHER-PERRIN: "Hey, Everyone - Stop Taking This Picture! (No, I Mean It.)" (Tor)
So, the most recently released image of Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises kind of got me worked up. The moment I saw it I think I said something to the nature of, "If I have to see one more woman posed with her behind in my general direction, looking smouldering-ly over her shoulder, I'm going to punch someone in the face. And you two [my Tor.com officemates] should be worried, since you're the closest people at hand."
Lisa Hix: "Sea-Monkeys and X-Ray Spex: Collecting the Bizarre Stuff Sold in the Back of Comic Books" (Collectors Weekly)
Amazing! Incredible! Unbelievable! Eyeglasses that let you see through clothes. The secrets to super-human strength. Scary seven-foot tall ghosts that do your bidding. All of this could be yours for a dollar or two. At least, that's what vintage comic-book ads would have you believe.
Henry Rollins: "Happy Birthday Iggy Pop! Your Biggest Fan, Henry" (LA Weekly)
Iggy Pop, who was born on April 21, 1947, turns 65 this Saturday. It is perhaps a waste of time to assign an age to someone so uniquely ageless, but it gives me an excuse to write about him. The passing years have made his face all the more charismatic; his cheekbones and jaw line are more rugged, his eyes more fiercely focused.
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'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
The kid & I went to the LA Times Festival of Books and had a lovely time.
Got home later than planned, fired up the computer and watched the new monitor pitch a hissy and then flatline.
Yeah, it's dead.
Back to borrowing the kid's. Argh.
Media Awards
GLAAD
Media watchdog the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation brought out some big names in Hollywood over the weekend including American sweetheart Betty White to honor movies, TV shows and performers.
At the annual GLAAD Media Awards on Saturday night, the group gave one honorary trophy to transgender activist and celebrity Chaz Bono, the child of superstar Cher and Sonny Bono, for promoting equal rights in the media. The makers of documentary "Becoming Chaz," Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey, earned another trophy for their film about his transformation.
Bono noted that some 15 years ago, when he was still Chastity, he had worked for GLAAD as an activist, and he reflected on how times had changed on TV since the late 1990s when shows such as "Will & Grace" first went on air and performers like Ellen DeGeneres came out in public.
Elsewhere, Betty White earned among the biggest laughs from the crowd when talking about her TV show "Hot in Cleveland," a comedy in which she, Jane Leeves, Wendie Malick and Valerie Bertinelli play four women living in that midwestern U.S. city.
"You'd swear we are all gay because we adore each other" so much, White said onstage, flanked by Malick and Leeves.
GLAAD
2nd Annual
World Book Night
You won't need to visit a store or library Monday night to see a book change hands or receive a free copy yourself.
Thousands of towns and cities around the country and beyond are participating in the second annual World Book Night, when some 2.5 million free books are expected to be donated, whether at a children's shelter in Texas or a crisis center in Tampa, Fla. Among the works being given are Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games," Sherman Alexie's "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian," Michael Connelly's "Blood Work" and Leif Enger's "Peace Like a River."
"It's premium company, this list, and I'm glad and lucky to be on it," Enger said. "It also feels like a challenge. The idea is to entice people back into reading - to mesmerize, to sweep them up, to remind them of the thrill of the open page."
World Book Night was originated in 2011 by managing director Jamie Byng of Canongate Books, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. This year marks the first time that the U.S. will be participating, along with the United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany. Although some British booksellers complained last year that such a mass giveaway could hurt sales, World Book Night is being supported by the leading U.S. publishers and by the American Booksellers Association, the trade group for independents.
Stores from Oswego, N.Y., to Hilo, Hawaii, will be helping out, but World Book Night will reach well beyond traditional channels, into military bases, prisons, ballparks and ferries. A church in Denver will give copies of Ann Patchett's "Bel Canto" to a nearby magnet school for refugees and immigrants. Vernon Legakis, a surfer in Santa Cruz, Calif., will seal copies of Patti Smith's "Just Kids" inside Ziplocs and hand them out at Monterey Bay. Attendees of a "Hunger Games" screening at Windsor Theatre in Hampton, Iowa, will receive editions of Collins' million-selling novel.
World Book Night
Rare Daylight Sighting
Meteor
A rare daytime meteor was seen and heard streaking over northern Nevada and parts of California on Sunday, just after the peak of an annual meteor shower.
Observers in the Reno-Sparks area of Nevada reported seeing a fireball at about 8 a.m. local time, accompanied or followed by a thunderous clap that experts said could have been a sonic boom from the meteor or the sound of it breaking up high over the Earth.
The Reno-Gazette Journal reported in an online account that the booming noise set off alarms at a Walmart store in Carson City, Nevada's capital, and was felt in and around the Lake Tahoe Basin and into California.
The meteor was reported seen in California from Sacramento to Orange County, hundreds of miles to the south. But the fireball went unnoticed in much of the Los Angeles area and other parts of Southern California because of cloudy skies.
Meteor
Wedding News
McNeil - Diamond
Neil Diamond has married his manager Katie McNeil in front of family and close friends in Los Angeles, People magazine said on Sunday.
The 71-year-old singer songwriter, who has written and performed dozens of hits including "Sweet Caroline," wed McNeil on Saturday, several months before he kicks of another tour in the United States on June 1.
It is the third marriage for Diamond and first for McNeil, 42.
Also on Saturday, British actress Carey Mulligan married Mumford & Sons singer Marcus Mumford on a farm in Somerset, England, in front of approximately 200 guests, the magazine reported.
McNeil - Diamond
Orthodox Church Claims Victimhood
Russia
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church warned tens of thousands of believers on Sunday they were "under attack by persecutors" on a nationwide day of prayer intended to heal divisions over a protest at the altar by a women's punk band.
At least 40,000 people came to hear Patriarch Kirill lead them in prayer at Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow, where Pussy Riot performed a "punk prayer" on February 21 deriding the Church's close relationship with President-elect Vladimir Putin.
The incident, and the arrest of three band members who face up to seven years in jail for their performance, has ignited a debate about the Church's role in politics and left Kirill open to criticism from inside and outside the Church.
But Kirill, who has steered the Church towards a more active role in politics, has faced criticism over his overt support for Putin, a former KGB spy whose 12-year rule has been described by the patriarch as a "miracle of God".
The Orthodox Church has described Pussy Riot's protest as the first in a series of anti-clerical acts of vandalism.
Russia
Bans Beer Brand
Alabama
You can buy Fat Bastard wine in Alabama, but you'll have to go elsewhere for Dirty Bastard beer.
The state alcoholic beverage control agency said it has banned the sale of that brand of beer in the state because of the profanity on its label.
Beer and wine are commonly sold in grocery and convenience stores and anyone can see the labels, so staff members rejected the brand because parents may not want young people to see rough language on the shelves, said Bob Martin, an attorney with the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board.
The state allows the sale of Fat Bastard wine and also approved the sale of another brand of beer called Raging Bitch, Martin said, but both of those decisions were made years ago.
More than one-third of Alabama's 67 counties still prohibit the sale of alcohol, and all but two counties in north Alabama are dry.
Alabama
Played Probe For Laughs
Sheriff Joe
An audio recording has surfaced of an Arizona sheriff playing his refusal to cooperate in a racial profiling investigation for laughs at a fundraiser for an anti-illegal immigration group in Texas. He ridicules politicians who sought the probe and displayed contempt toward federal authorities who were - and are still - investigating him on two fronts.
The dismissive comments in 2009 by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio came as the U.S. Justice Department had already launched a civil rights probe of his trademark immigration patrols and the FBI already was examining abuse-of-power allegations for the sheriff's investigations of political foes.
In the September 2009 speech in Houston, Arpaio boasted that he arrested hundreds of illegal immigrants after politicians and federal investigators started to pick apart his patrols. He said he wouldn't cooperate with the inquiry, but said he would tone down the patrols - if he was proven wrong.
"But I'm not. After they went after me, we arrested 500 more just for spite," the self-proclaimed "America's toughest sheriff" said, pausing for laughter and applause.
The sheriff also boasted of kicking federal civil rights investigators out of his office. And he acknowledged that most controversies were only to his benefit, pointing out that his re-election campaign raised $50,000 when the Rev. Al Sharpton came to Arizona to criticize his immigration patrols.
Sheriff Joe
Rejects Vatican Condemnation
US Nuns
The leader of a group of US Catholic nuns on Saturday rejected condemnation from a Vatican report that said it defied Church doctrine.
"We haven't violated any teaching," Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a Catholic social justice lobby, told AFP, insisting the group would not stop "caring for the least among us on the margins of society."
Network was singled out for supporting women's health rights in a Vatican report this week condemning the main US association of Catholic nuns, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR).
The three-year inquiry by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which oversees Roman Catholic doctrine, criticized the LCWR for taking liberal stances on contraception, homosexuality and female priests.
Campbell said that Network, which works with the LCWR and vocally supported President Barack Obama's healthcare reform legislation, would not shy away from its mission, calling the Vatican's report "painful," and also puzzling.
US Nuns
Bans Painkiller
Canada
Canadian police and doctors on Thursday reported a rash of pharmacy robberies and a rise in overdoses after the prescription drug OxyContin was pulled from circulation last month.
Addicts and drug dealers stepped up raids on drug stores at gunpoint in search of the last doses of the painkiller or turned to alternative mind benders with sometimes deadly results.
Meanwhile, detox clinics with few beds are being overwhelmed by demand for services, as some optimistically viewed the Canadian ban on OxyContin as an opportunity to kick their addiction and asked for help.
Purdue Pharma stopped manufacturing OxyContin in Canada in March and replaced it with a new drug called OxyNeo that is harder to abuse because it cannot be easily crushed or injected to get high.
Although no longer prescribed, some pharmacies still have small quantities of OxyContin left over in their stores.
Canada
'Will Not Cave In To Pressure'
Gambia
Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh has warned foreign diplomats his country would not be "bribed" with aid to accept homosexuality.
His comments late Saturday come less than two weeks after 19 people, including Gambians, Senegalese and Nigerians were arrested and charged with indecent practices after being "suspected of homosexuality".
"If you are to give us aid for men and men or for women and women to marry, leave it. We don't need your aid because as far as I am the president of the Gambia, you will never see that happen in this country," he said.
Gambia's treatment of gays has long drawn criticism from international observers, who accuse the small west African nation of homophobia.
Gambia
Weekend Box Office
'Think Like a Man'
The date-night movies "Think Like a Man" and "The Lucky One" finally have knocked "The Hunger Games" off its No. 1 box-office perch.
"Think Like a Man," based on Steve Harvey's dating-advice best-seller, debuted as the top weekend draw with $33 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. That's almost double what studio executives had expected for the Sony Screen Gems ensemble movie, which features Michael Ealy, Taraji P. Henson and Gabrielle Union.
The Warner Bros. drama "The Lucky One," starring Zac Efron in an adaptation of Nicholas Sparks' romance novel, opened at No. 2 with $22.8 million. It also came in a bit above studio expectations going into the weekend.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. "Think Like a Man," $33 million.
2. "The Lucky One," $22.8 million ($3.8 million international).
3. "The Hunger Games," $14.5 million ($13 million international).
4. "Chimpanzee," $10.2 million.
5. "The Three Stooges," $9.2 million.
6. "The Cabin in the Woods," $7.8 million ($3.3 million international).
7. "American Reunion," $5.2 million ($9.5 million international).
8. "Titanic" in 3-D, $5 million ($34.3 million international).
9. "21 Jump Street," $4.6 million ($3.1 million international).
10. "Mirror Mirror," $4.1 million ($5.8 million international).
'Think Like a Man'
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