Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Henry Rollins: Jim Crow America (LA Weekly)
We spent several hours at the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia located at Ferris State University in Big Rapids. It is as stated. One display case after another of dolls, drawings, products and other items depicting African-Americans as buffoons, criminals, maniacs and animals. A standout image in this gallery of America on full fail mode is a photograph of several young black children with the caption "Alligator Bait."
151. ULTIMATE WARRIOR: Legacy (Zen Pencils)
"Every man's heart one day beats its final beat. His lungs breathe their final breath. And if what that man did in his life makes the blood pulse through the body of others and makes them believe deeper, in something larger than life then his essence, his spirit, will be immortalized." - Ultimate Warrior
Cezary Jan Strusiewicz: 5 Movies Plots Given Away by the Characters' Names (Cracked)
#5. The Name of Nicolas Cage's Character in Face/Off Revealed How He Was Going to Die
Felix Clay: 4 Awful Mistakes Restaurants Make All the Time (Cracked)
A small menu seems counterintuitive, but it also tells a customer, "See this shit? I own this shit. If you eat this shit, you will mouthgasm, I don't give a damn how gross that sounds. I never bothered to learn how to cook bullshit like liver and onions. I perfected making this shit so you can eat it and be whisked away to Flavortown in a limo driven by Dr. Tasty, Ph.D."
Suzanne Moore: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys - review (Guardian)
'All underarm hair and knickers showing' - this frank, feminist memoir from the Slits guitarist captures the importance of punk.
Peter Conrad: "The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life review" (Guardian)
Andy Miller's 12-month-long immersion in the classics renewed his zest for life - and produced an inimitable memoir.
Kitty Empire: Rock Stars Stole My Life! review - Mark Ellen is a 'Zelig on adjectives' (Guardian)
From punk right through to Lady Gaga, Mark Ellen was there, wryly taking note.
How Well Can You Spell? (Washington Post)
Spelling Quiz.
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
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David Bruce has approximately 50 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
"Doug's Most Shared Facebook Post" Today
wrote:
has retired.
took the day off.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
from Marc Perkel
BartCop
Hello Bartcop fans,
As you all know the untimely passing of Terry was unexpected, even by
him. We all knew he had cancer but we all thought he had some years
left. So some of us who have worked closely with him over the years are
scrambling around trying to figure out what to do. My job, among other
things, is to establish communications with the Bartcop community and
provide email lists and groups for those who might put something
together. Those who want to play an active roll in something coming from
this, or if you are one of Bart's pillars, should send an email to
active@bartcop.com.
The most active open discussion is on Bart's Facebook page.
( www.facebook.com/bartcop )
You can listen to Bart's theme song here
or here.
( www.bartcop.com/blizing-saddles.mp3 )
( youtu.be/MySGAaB0A9k )
We have opened up the radio show archives which are now free. Listen to
all you want.
( bartcop.com/members )
Bart's final wish was to pay off the house mortgage for Mrs. Bart who is
overwhelmed and so very grateful for the support she has received.
Anyone wanting to make a donation can click on this the yellow donate
button on bartcop.com
But - I need you all to help keep this going. This note
isn't going to directly reach all of Bart's fans. So if you can repost
it on blogs and discussion boards so people can sign up then when we
figure out what's next we can let more people know. This list is just
over 600 but like to get it up to at least 10,000 pretty quick. So
here's the signup link for this email list.
( mailman.bartcop.com/listinfo/bartnews )
Marc Perkel
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny with a nice breeze.
Andrew Jackson in History Miniseries
Kris Kristofferson
History's "Texas Rising" has cast its president.
Singer-actor Kris Kristofferson has been tapped to play President Andrew Jackson in the eight-hour miniseries, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
The event series, from A+E Studios and ITV Studios America and produced by Thinkfactory Media, hails from Hatfields & McCoys' Leslie Greif, who will executive produce the mini. Rising, which will premiere in 2015, will detail the Texas Revolution against Mexico and the rise of the legendary Texas Rangers, the oldest law enforcement group in North America. Part one is written by Greif, Darrell Fetty and Ted Mann, the latter of whom co-wrote Hatfields for History. Nights two, three and four will be written by Greif and Fetty.
During the Texas Revolution, Jackson avoided direct U.S. involvement and was unwilling to risk open war against Mexico as he continued to monitor the political situation. But Jackson was a mentor to and admirer of Gen. Sam Houston (Bill Paxton), and he realized the fate of Texas would profoundly influence the future of the U.S.
Kris Kristofferson
39 This Summer
Studio Releases
Headed to the movies this weekend? Here's a thought to ponder: Of the 39 major studio releases scheduled for this summer, only one is directed by a woman -- that would be "Jupiter Down," co-directed by Lana Wachowski and her brother Andy. That's according to a recent analysis
When you think of gender in Hollywood, you probably think of the issues facing actresses -- the disparities in screen time for men and women, the lack of strong roles for women, the continuing failure of films to pass the Bechdel test. But many of these issues arise from what's happening behind the camera -- namely, the astonishing lack of women in directorial roles, particularly on big-budget films.
I wanted to quantify this, so I gathered data on the top 400 films by domestic box-office gross per year, from 2009 to 2013, from the film data site the-numbers.com. I supplemented this data with numbers from the Rotten Tomatoes API, particularly to fill in missing director names. I then ran the directors' first names through genderize.io to obtain the likely gender of each director, supplementing this with some manual entry when genderize couldn't produce a result with high certainty. All in all, I ended up with a dataset of about 2,000 films and their directors. Some key findings on the state of gender equality in the director's chair are below.
In 2013, women directed about 14 percent of the films in the-numbers.com's database of top box office draws. This is up from a low of about 8 percent in 2010. But women are much more scarce at the top of the box office. They directed only two of the top 100 films in 2013 -- "Frozen" and the remake of "Carrie." Female directors are more poorly represented among Hollywood's biggest films than they are in the executive suite at Google.
Studio Releases
Wedding News
Wallem - Etheridge
Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter and gay rights activist Melissa Etheridge has gotten married.
People magazine says the 53-year-old Etheridge married partner Linda Wallem at the San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito, California, on Saturday.
Etheridge and the 53-year-old Wallem, a co-creator of the television series "Nurse Jackie," began dating in 2010. They announced their engagement following the Supreme Court's decision on gay rights.
Besides the singer's four children, the magazine says several celebrities attended the ceremony, including Chelsea Handler, Rosie O'Donnell, Whitney Cummings, Peter Facinelli and recording artist Sia.
Wallem - Etheridge
Hospital News
Marianne Faithfull
British singer and songwriter Marianne Faithfull has been hospitalised after falling and breaking her hip while on holiday in Greece, a surgeon said Sunday.
The 67-year-old ex-lover of Rolling Stones' frontman, Mick Jagger, fell on Friday on the Eastern Aegean island of Rhodes.
"Mrs Faithfull fractured her hip as a result of a fall. She underwent a successful surgery. Tomorrow, we will try to help her get up and we assess she needs to stay in hospital for about a week", Alexandros Pittas, the orthopedic surgeon that operated on the singer told AFP.
Health problems have dogged the singer in recent years. She has suffered breast cancer, has Hepatitis C and in August 2013 was forced to cancel several shows after breaking a bone in her back.
Marianne Faithfull
Illinois Shelving $100M Gift
Obama Library
A plan to offer $100 million in tax dollars to lure Barack Obama's presidential library to Illinois is on the shelf, as lawmakers wrapped up their spring session without advancing the idea.
Democrats in the president's home state pushed the proposal to compete against rival bids from Hawaii and New York. But it faced opposition from Republicans wary of an expensive and precedent-setting gift - with no immediately identified funding source - for a mostly private endeavor when the state faces serious financial difficulties.
Not all Democrats were on board either. Both the Democratic-controlled House and Senate adjourned without calling for any final votes on the measure.
Sponsors of the measure vowed to continue their advocacy, but the initiative now must wait despite a June 16 deadline for host proposals to Obama's library commission.
Obama Library
Scoops Up Images
NSA
The US National Security Agency is scooping up large quantities of images of people for use in facial recognition programs, the New York Times reported Sunday, citing top secret documents.
The Times said documents, which were obtained from fugitive former US intelligence analyst Edward Snowden, show a significant increase in reliance on facial recognition technology at the agency over the past four years.
The report said the NSA was using new software to exploit a flood of images included in intercepted emails, text messages, social media posts, video conferences and other communications.
It cited leaked 2011 documents as saying the NSA intercepts "millions of images per day," including 55,000 "facial recognition quality images."
"It's not just the traditional communications we're after: It's taking a full-arsenal approach that digitally exploits the clues a target leaves behind in their regular activities on the net to compile biographic and biometric information" that can help "implement precision targeting," a 2010 document quoted by the newspaper said.
NSA
Reported Abuse
Jimmy Savile
A British children's charity says at least 500 people have reported abuse by the late entertainer Jimmy Savile, with the youngest alleged victim just 2 years old.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children said Monday that the most common age group for victims was 13 to 15.
The cigar-chomping, platinum-haired Savile was a British television fixture for several decades, but after his death at 84 in 2011, witnesses and victims came forward to accuse him of sexual abuse. Police have since described the television and radio presenter as a serial sexual predator who used his fame to target young and mostly female victims, from star-struck teens at television recordings to patients in hospital beds.
A police investigation concluded last year that Savile's abuse spanned half a century and included at least 214 offences, most against victims under 18.
Jimmy Savile
Turkey's Greatest Monument
Hagia Sophia
It has served as the exalted seat of two faiths since its vast dome and lustrous gold mosaics first levitated above Istanbul in the 6th Century: Christendom's greatest cathedral for 900 years and one of Islam's greatest mosques for another 500.
Today, the Hagia Sophia, or Ayasofya in Turkish, is officially a museum: Turkey's most-visited monument, whose formally neutral status symbolizes the secular nature of the modern Turkish state.
But tens of thousands of Muslim worshippers gathering there on Saturday hope it will again be a mosque, a dream they believe Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan can fulfill.
There are even rumors - denied by the government - that Erdogan, a religious conservative who is seeking the presidency at an election in August, could lead prayers there one day soon.
Built in 537 by Byzantine Emperor Justinian whose rule stretched from Spain to the Middle East, Hagia Sophia - meaning "Divine Wisdom" in Greek - was unrivalled in the Christian world until Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II conquered the city in 1453 and turned it into a mosque. Modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk decreed it a museum in 1934.
Hagia Sophia
New Focus
War On Women
Nearly 300 schoolgirls abducted in Nigeria. A pregnant Pakistani woman stoned to death by her family for marrying the man she loved. Widespread rape in many war zones. And in California, a murderous rampage by a disturbed young man who had depicted sorority members as a prime target.
From across the world, startling reports of violence against women surface week after week. The World Health Organization has declared the problem an epidemic, calculating that one in three women worldwide will experience sexual or physical violence - most often from their husband or male partner.
Yet even as they decry the violence and the abundance of misogynistic rhetoric, women's rights activists see reasons for hope.
"The violence has been happening forever - it's not anything new," said Serra Sippel, president of the Washington-based Center for Health and Gender Equity. "What's new is that people in the United States and globally are coming around to say 'enough is enough,' and starting to hold governments and institutional leaders accountable."
War On Women
Decades-Old Training Photos Emerge
Apollo Astronauts
Before Apollo astronauts went to the moon, they went to Hawaii to train on the Big Island's lunar landscapes.
Now, decades-old photos are surfacing of astronauts scooping up Hawaii's soil and riding across volcanic fields in a "moon buggy" vehicle.
The Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems, a Hawaii state agency, is displaying the photos at its Hilo headquarters. Rob Kelso, the agency's executive director, found the images at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Astronauts from Apollo missions 13 through 17 trained in Hawaii as did some back up crews, Kelso said.
Apollo Astronauts
Weekend Box Office
'Maleficent'
The biggest box-office debut of Angelina Jolie's career propelled Disney's twisted fairy tale "Maleficent" to a scary-good $70 million opening.
The PG-rated fantasy beat forecasts to easily top all films over the weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. Though "Maleficent" was early on considered a risky endeavor for Disney that might turn away family audiences by retelling "Sleeping Beauty" from the villain's perspective, the film emerged as a hit largely because of the draw of Jolie.
Seth MacFarlane's Western comedy "A Million Ways to Die in the West" was out-gunned by "Maleficent." The R-rated Universal release opened in third place with a tepid $17.1 million despite a starry cast of Liam Neeson, Charlize Theron and Amanda Seyfried. By contrast, MacFarlane's "Ted" (for which he's making a sequel) opened with $54.4 million in 2012.
Last weekend's top film, Fox's big-budget mutant sequel "X-Men: Days of Future Past," dropped to second with $32.6 million. It's a somewhat steep decline for "Days of Future Past," but the film made $95.6 million internationally in its second week, good enough to push its global cumulative total past $500 million already.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Rentrak. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released on Monday.
1."Maleficent," $70 million, ($100.6 million international).
2."X-Men: Days of Future Past," $32.6 million ($95.6 million international).
3."A Million Ways to Die in the West," $17.1 million ($10.3 million international).
4."Godzilla," $12.2 million ($15 million international).
5."Blended," $8.4 million.
6."Neighbors," $7.7 million ($7.6 million international).
7."The Amazing Spider-Man 2," $3.8 million ($4.1 million international).
8. "Million Dollar Arm," $3.7 million.
9."Chef," $2 million.
10."The Other Woman," $1.4 million.
'Maleficent'
In Memory
Ann B. Davis
Emmy-winning actress Ann B. Davis, who became the country's favourite and most famous housekeeper as the devoted Alice Nelson of "The Brady Bunch," died Sunday at a San Antonio hospital. She was 88.
Bill Frey, a retired bishop and a longtime friend of Davis, said she suffered a fall Saturday at her San Antonio home and never recovered. Frey said Davis had lived with him and his wife, Barbara, since 1976.
More than a decade before scoring as the Bradys' loyal Alice, Davis was the razor-tongued secretary on another stalwart TV sitcom, "The Bob Cummings Show," which brought her two Emmys. Over the years, she also appeared on Broadway and in occasional movies.
As "The Brady Bunch" theme song reminded viewers each week, the Bradys combined two families into one. Florence Henderson played a widow raising three daughters when she met her TV husband, Robert Reed, a widower with three boys.
In her blue and white maid's uniform, Davis' character, Alice Nelson, was constantly cleaning up messes large and small, and she was a mainstay of stability for the family. Davis' face occupied the centre square during the show's opening credits. Her love interest was Sam the Butcher, played by Allan Melvin.
Older TV viewers remember Davis for another non-glamorous role, on "The Bob Cummings Show," also known as "Love That Bob." She played Schultzy, the assistant to Cummings' character, a handsome, swinging bachelor photographer always chasing beautiful women.
It brought Davis supporting actress Emmy Awards in 1958 and 1959.
After the series ended in 1959, Davis appeared in such movies as "A Man Called Peter," ''Lover Come Back" and "All Hands on Deck." During layoffs she played in summer stock.
Between her two better-known shows, she played a gym teacher at an exclusive girls' school in 1965-66 in "The John Forsythe Show."
She was born Ann Bradford Davis in 1926, in Schenectady, New York, and grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania. She said she took to using her middle initial because "just plain Ann Davis goes by pretty fast."
She was stage-struck since the age of 6 when she and her twin sister, Harriet, earned $2 with their puppet show. She attended the University of Michigan, joking that she was a premed student "until I discovered chemistry."
She graduated in 1948 with a degree in theatre and later joined a repertory theatre in Erie, Pennsylvania. She told The Associated Press in 1993 that she got her big break while doing a cabaret act in Los Angeles, singing and telling jokes.
"Somebody said, 'Get your agent to call the new Bob Cummings show. They're looking for a funny lady.' Within three hours I had the job. That was January 1955. I had such fun with that show.
For many years after "The Brady Bunch" wound up, Davis led a quiet religious life, affiliating herself with a group led by Frey.
"I was born again," she told The Associated Press in 1993. "It happens to Episcopalians. Sometimes it doesn't hit you till you're 47 years old."
Davis never married, saying she never found a man who was more interesting than her career. "By the time I started to get interested (in finding someone)," she told the Chicago Sun-Times, "all the good ones were taken."
Ann B. Davis
In Memory
Marylin Beck
Marilyn Beck, prominent Hollywood columnist who led the way for a hard news approach to celebrity journalism, died Saturday of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease after a three-year battle with lung cancer. She was 85.
A straight-shooter who was known for asking celebrities the hard questions, she wrote a five-day-a-week column that, at the height of her fame, was running in some 500 papers, domestic and international.
Beck often touched on subjects that celebrities were hesitant to talk about otherwise, such as when she asked Sylvester Stallone about leaving his wife. She also played the investigative role at times, digging into the drug culture in Aspen, Colorado after the shooting of skier Spider Sabich by singer Claudine Longet.
Beck was also noted for scoring several memorable interviews. She was the first to interview Elvis Presley after he left the military, and had candid conversations with Dick Van Dyke (who chose her to go public with his alcoholism with), Lucille Ball and Michael Landon. She was the favorite interviewer of many, including Welsh actor Richard Burton, and had a long-running fued with Robert Blake.
Outside of print, Beck often appeared on television, with her "Marilyn Beck's Hollywood Outtakes" specials on NBC, stints on "PM Magazine" and E!'s "Gossip Show." She also appeared on L.A. radio station KFI on several occasions.
The journalist also authored books, including 1972?s "Marilyn Beck's Hollywood" and 1988?s "Only Make Believe."
Beck started her career on the entertainment beat with a local column and fan magazine writing and editing. She wrote her first column for Bell McClure syndicate in 1967. She was named successor to Sheilah Graham by the North American Newspaper Alliance in 1970.
As her influence grew in the '70s, she found herself being featured prominently in the New York Daily News. There, she worked alongside Stacy Jenel Smith, who would later become her writing partner.
Beck was born in Chicago, raised in Los Angeles and studied journalism at USC. She is survived by her second husband, Arthur Levine, and several children and grandchildren.
Marylin Beck
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