Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Artists' Statements Demystified (Video; under 2 minutes)
Charlotte Young educates the public on how to interpret an artist's statement.
Corrupt Cops Stories (Goldenseed)
A weekly look at Law enforcement ' lack or abuse of it' from the good old USA as supplied by our friends at stopthedrugwar.org.
Holly Dunn: "Experience: I survived a serial killer" (Guardian)
'Five minutes earlier I'd been laughing and flirting. Now I was frozen with terror.'
Marc Dion: "Small Crap Warnings: The FDA and Missing Teeth" (Creators Syndicate)
I think we need other kinds of warnings, warnings more suited to life's everyday dangers. For instance, when you go to apply for a job, wouldn't it be nice to see this sign on the company's front door. "WARNING: No pension. No raise in three years. Chief Executive Officer and his boardroom butt-buddies received $180 million in bonuses last year."
Liz Weston: How long should car be kept before replacing it? (Los Angeles Times)
With proper maintenance, today's vehicles can notch well over 200,000 miles. Owning a car for 10 years or more gives you plenty of time to save up for your next vehicle.
George Varga: "Isn't That Special? Dana Carvey Returns" (Creators Syndicate)
Dana Carvey has created so many classic comedy routines over the years that it's difficult for fans to agree exactly which one is the most, well, special.
Meet the superfans (Guardian)
One has an onion pickled by Terry Pratchett. Another has a pair of Neil Diamond's underpants. And the Shane Richie car has to be seen to be believed. Interviews by Leo Benedictus.
JOE MORGENSTERN: "Oy Story: 'Cars 2' Is a Dollar-Driven Edsel" (Wall Street Journal)
To make up for their lack of hands, the cars in "Cars 2" do all sorts of cool things with their front tires, and the 3-D animation as a whole is spectacular. But the movie has its own deficits-a lack of variety, originality, subtlety, clarity and plain old charm. The law of averages has finally caught up with the most remarkable studio in modern movie history, the dream factory that lived up to Buzz Lightyear's joyous cry of "To infinity and beyond." This frenzied sequel seldom gets beyond mediocrity.
Roger Ebert: Review of "CARS 2" (PG; 3 ˝ stars)
While I was watching "Cars 2," an elusive nostalgia tugged at my mind. No, I wasn't remembering Pixar's original "Cars" from 2006. This was something more deeply buried, and finally, in the middle of one of the movie's sensational grand prix races, it came to me: I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom many years ago, with some toy cars lined up in front of me, while I used my hands to race them around on the floor and in the air, meanwhile making that noise kids make by squooshing spit in their mouths.
Interview by Laura Barnet: "Portrait of the artist: Alice Cooper, musician" (Guardian)
'I worked with Salvador Dalí for four days. He did a sculpture of my brain with a chocolate eclair running down the back.'
Roger Ebert: Review of "Bad Teacher" (R; 2 stars)
"Bad Teacher" immediately brings "Bad Santa" to mind and suffers by the comparison. Its bad person is neither bad enough or likable enough. The transgressions of Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) are more or less what you'd expect, but what's surprising is that she's so nasty and unpleasant. Billy Bob Thornton, as the Bad Santa, was more outrageously offensive and yet more redeemed by his desperation. He was bad for urgent reasons. Elizabeth seems bad merely as a greedy lifestyle choice.
Henry Rollins: Of Rock and Dinosaurs (LA Weekly)
This may sound like a parsing of words, willful denial or sheer evasiveness but I don't believe in vacations. I am not saying one should not get out of town and see something else, lest one goes nuts. But the word itself smacks of surrender and defeat. I don't take vacations. I go adventuring into the territory. I want to come back sunburned, five pounds lighter and somehow malaria free yet one more time.
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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Named Honorary Flood Fund Chair
Josh Duhamel
Hollywood actor and Minot, N.D., native Josh Duhamel has been named honorary chairman of a fund set up for the city's flood recovery.
In a statement, Duhamel said he grew up in Minot and his sister and her family lost their home to flooding from the Souris River. Duhamel says he would always consider the city home.
The fund will help Minot and the surrounding area with grants for construction materials, mortgage help, household items and other needs.
Niki Carlson, a program director for the Minot Area Community Foundation, which established the fund, says Duhamel was in Moscow on Sunday promoting his new film.
Josh Duhamel
Image Sells For More Than $2M
Billy the Kid
What is believed to be the only surviving, authenticated portrait of Billy the Kid went up for auction in Denver and sold for more than $2.3 million.
The tintype on Saturday evening went to private collector William Koch at Brian Lebel's 22nd Annual Old West Show & Auction, where auction spokeswoman Melissa McCracken said the image of the 1800s outlaw was the most expensive piece ever sold at the event
A 15 percent fee was tacked on to the bidding price, making selling price more than $2.6 million.
Organizers had expected it could fetch between $300,000 and $400,000.
Billy the Kid
Wedding News
Weisz - Craigdate
Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz, who play husband and wife in an upcoming film, have taken the roles to heart.
Robin Baun of Slate PR, which represents Craig, said Saturday that the actor and Weisz have married. She did not offer any details.
The British actors had been quietly dating. The wedding previously was reported by the British newspaper News of the World.
The 43-year-old Craig had a longtime girlfriend, Satsuki Mitchell, and has a daughter from a previous relationship. The 41-year-old Weisz was in a relationship with director Darren Aronofsky ("Black Swan"), with whom she has a son.
Weisz - Craigdate
Hong Kong Museum Proposal Shelved
Bruce Lee
Efforts to build a Bruce Lee museum in the late kung fu movie star's hometown of Hong Kong have been stalled again.
Fans have been calling for an official tribute to the screen icon for years. Their hopes appeared to be answered two years ago when the Hong Kong government and the owner of Lee's former home reached an agreement to convert the property - a two-story house currently used as an hourly love motel - into a museum.
But the Hong Kong government said Sunday that negotiations with the owner, businessman Yu Pang-lin, have broken down.
Wong Yiu-keung, president of the Hong Kong Bruce Lee Club, said Yu made unreasonable demands, such as wanting to set up his own offices in the museum.
Bruce Lee
Hackers Disbanding
LulzSec
The Lulz Security group of rogue hackers announced it was disbanding on Saturday with one last data dump, which included internal AOL Inc and AT&T documents.
LulzSec, which gained wide recognition for breaching the websites of Sony Corp, the CIA and a British police unit among other targets, said in a statement that it had accomplished its mission to disrupt corporate and government bodies for entertainment.
"Our planned 50 day cruise has expired, and we must now sail into the distance, leaving behind -- we hope -- inspiration, fear, denial, happiness, approval, disapproval, mockery, embarrassment, thoughtfulness, jealousy, hate, even love," the group said.
Known for irreverence and a fondness for naval metaphors, the hacker group took to Twitter -- the microblogging site where it had more than 277,000 followers -- to release its statement.
A link to the release also was posted on www.lulzsecurity.comhttp:// but there was no way to independently contact the group to confirm the release.
LulzSec
Russia Theatre Legend Quits In Fury
Yuri Lyubimov
Russia's most celebrated living director on Sunday parted company with the theatre he has led for almost a half century, accusing its actors of only being interested in money.
Yuri Lyubimov, 93, who founded Moscow's Taganka Theatre in 1964, fell out with the acting troupe in a dispute over pay while on tour in the Czech Republic and said he had no intention of working with them any more.
The scandal erupted before a performance of Brecht's classic morality play "The Good Person of Szechwan" when the actors refused to rehearse unless they were paid first.
His wife Katalin told RIA Novosti that to keep the show going Lyubimov paid the actors out of his own pocket but then vowed never to work with them again.
Yuri Lyubimov
Face Expulsion
Journalists
Israel said Sunday that any foreign journalist caught on board a Gaza-bound flotilla could face deportation and a 10-year ban from the country, in a move that threatened to worsen the nation's already strained relationship with the international media.
Journalists said they should be allowed to cover a legitimate news story, but Israel said the media would be complicit in an illegal breach of its naval blockade of a hostile territory ruled by a terrorist group.
The announcement reflected Israeli jitters about the international flotilla, which comes just more than a year after a similar mission ended with the deaths of nine Turkish activists in clashes with Israeli naval commandos who intercepted them. Each side blamed the other for the violence.
In a letter to foreign journalists, the Government Press Office's director, Oren Helman, called the flotilla "a dangerous provocation that is being organized by western and Islamic extremist elements to aid Hamas."
He warned journalists that taking part in the flotilla "is an intentional violation of Israeli law and is liable to lead to participants being denied entry into the State of Israel for 10 years, to the impoundment of their equipment and to additional sanctions," Helman said.
Journalists
Special Rules For Special Corporations
Home Depot
The photograph on Home Depot's website shows a line of smiling soldiers unloading a truck stacked with power tools and other company wares.
The company says this shows "federal dollars go farther at The Home Depot." San Francisco Attorney Paul Scott says the photo also shows the company providing Chinese-made products in violation of the Buy American Act, and the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating.
A federal judge in April refused Home Depot Inc.'s bid to toss a whistleblower lawsuit Scott and other attorneys filed against the Atlanta-based company. Now the country's largest home improvement retailer is the latest company accused of running afoul of the Buy American Act, a 1933 law aimed at protecting U.S. jobs. The law requires that all materials used in construction of public projects originate in the United States or "designated countries."
At issue in the Home Depot case are GSA "schedule" contracts. Those contracts authorize any government agency to purchase tens of thousands of products from the company's website.
The lawsuit alleges that up to half of those products are made in China and other non-designated countries. The lawsuit was filed by two employees of another government contractor in 2008 that claimed their employer, the Actus Lend Lease Co., supplied noncompliant material in several military housing projects.
Home Depot
Not Pretty
The 'New Normal'
According to The New York Times, the FBI just raided a data center in Virginia and seized many of its servers, causing websites owned by "tens of clients" to go offline -- including those belonging to people who hadn't broken a law, and were not suspected of any crime.
It may seem silly to get upset about the police taking down websites you don't use. A certain quote may come to mind, though, as we look at other ways that the police in America abuse their power.
A 72-year-old woman named Kathryn Winkfein got tasered not too long ago after she lost her temper at the cop who pulled her over. Her offense? Shouting at him.
Luckily, she "learned her lesson" about talking back to America's authority figures. She was also awarded $40,000 in damages, which her County Constable, Richard McCain, complained was a reward for "bad behavior." Apparently putting 50,000 volts through the heart of someone's great-grandma is not bad behavior, as long as you wear a police uniform.
Winkfein was lucky. In what Digby calls the "Taser Atrocity Of The Day," a man who took groceries without having paid for them was tasered continuously for 37 seconds, after he became "aggressive and was communicating loudly." He died in the hospital.
The 'New Normal'
Whales, Plankton Migrate
Northwest Passage
When a 43-foot (13-meter) gray whale was spotted off the Israeli town of Herzliya last year, scientists came to a startling conclusion: it must have wandered across the normally icebound route above Canada, where warm weather had briefly opened a clear channel three years earlier.
On a microscopic level, scientists also have found plankton in the North Atlantic where it had not existed for at least 800,000 years.
The whale's odyssey and the surprising appearance of the plankton indicates a migration of species through the Northwest Passage, a worrying sign of how global warming is affecting animals and plants in the oceans as well as on land.
"The implications are enormous. It's a threshold that has been crossed," said Philip C. Reid, of the Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science in Plymouth, England.
Reid said the last time the world witnessed such a major incursion from the Pacific was 2 million years ago, which had "a huge impact on the North Atlantic," driving some species to extinction as the newcomers dominated the competition for food.
Northwest Passage
Change May Disrupt Clocks
Power Grid
A yearlong experiment with the nation's electric grid could mess up traffic lights, security systems and some computers - and make plug-in clocks and appliances like programmable coffeemakers run up to 20 minutes fast.
"A lot of people are going to have things break and they're not going to know why," said Demetrios Matsakis, head of the time service department at the U.S. Naval Observatory, one of two official timekeeping agencies in the federal government.
Since 1930, electric clocks have kept time based on the rate of the electrical current that powers them. If the current slips off its usual rate, clocks run a little fast or slow. Power companies now take steps to correct it and keep the frequency of the current - and the time - as precise as possible.
The group that oversees the U.S. power grid is proposing an experiment that would allow more frequency variation than it does now without corrections, according to a company presentation obtained by The Associated Press.
No one is quite sure what will be affected. This won't change the clocks in cellphones, GPS or even on computers, and it won't have anything to do with official U.S. time or Internet time.
But wall clocks and those on ovens and coffeemakers - anything that flashes "12:00" when it loses power - may be just a bit off every second, and that error can grow with time.
Power Grid
'Thriller' Jacket Fetches $1.8M
Michael Jackson
A famed black-and-red calfskin jacket that Michael Jackson wore in the classic "Thriller" video has sold at auction for $1.8 million.
Darren Julien, president and CEO of Julien's Auctions in Beverly Hills, says the jacket was purchased Sunday by Milton Verret, a commodities trader from Austin, Texas.
Verret says the jacket will be sent on tour and used as a fundraising tool for children's charities.
A portion of the sale price will go to the Shambala Preserve, a big cat sanctuary caring for two tigers Jackson one owned.
Michael Jackson
Revolver Sells At Auction
Al Capone
A revolver belonging to notorious American gangster Al Capone fetched 67,250 pounds ($110,000) at a London auction at Christie's on Wednesday. It had been expected to sell for 50-70,000 pounds.
The Colt .38 revolver was sold by a private collector, who provided an original personal letter from Madeleine Capone Morichetti, the widow of Al's brother Ralph Capone, confirming that the gun "previously belonged to and was only used by Al Capone while he was alive."
Colt records indicate that the pistol was made in May, 1929, just a few months after the famous Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago when seven people were killed in a prohibition-era clash between gangs including Capone's.
The successful buyer, who remained anonymous, was an online bidder.
Al Capone
Offered A Lift Home
Stranded Penguin
A young emperor penguin stranded in New Zealand has survived two medical procedures and now has an offer of a lift home.
Yet the aquatic bird that many are calling Happy Feet - after the lighthearted 2006 movie - is not out of danger yet. The penguin remained on an intravenous drip Saturday and faces another procedure Monday to remove more sand from its digestive system.
If it does pull through, a businessman wants to take it by boat to Antarctica next February.
Happy Feet arrived on Peka Peka Beach, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) northwest of Wellington, last Monday, the first time in 44 years that an emperor penguin has been spotted in the wild in New Zealand. Typically, emperors spend their entire lives in and around Antarctica.
At first Happy Feet seemed fine, but as the week progressed, the bird became more lethargic. It ate a lot of sand, apparently mistaking it for snow, which emperor penguins eat in Antarctica to hydrate themselves during the frozen winters.
Stranded Penguin
Weekend Box Office
'Cars 2'
Pixar Animation remains undefeated at the box-office races.
The Disney unit's animated sequel "Cars 2" cruised to a No. 1 finish with a $68 million opening weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. That makes 12 wins in a row for Pixar since the company's first feature film, 1995's "Toy Story."
The previous weekend's No. 1 flick, Ryan Reynolds' "Green Lantern," fell to third-place with $18.4 million. That was off a steep 65 percent from its revenues over opening weekend, raising the domestic total for the Warner Bros. superhero tale to $89.3 million.
While the G-rated "Cars 2" cornered the family market, "Bad Teacher" was the weekend's grown-up choice, starring Diaz as a foul-mouthed, boozy, gold-digging educator.
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. "Cars 2," $68 million ($42.9 million international).
2. "Bad Teacher," $31 million ($12.9 million international).
3. "Green Lantern," $18.4 million.
4. "Super 8," $12.1 million ($10.5 million international).
5. "Mr. Popper's Penguins," $10.3 million.
6. "X-Men: First Class," $6.6 million.
7. "The Hangover Part II," $5.9 million.
8. "Bridesmaids," $5.4 million ($11.5 million international).
9. "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," $4.7 million ($13.5 million international).
10. "Midnight in Paris," $4.5 million.
'Cars 2'
In Memory
Nick Charles
Nick Charles, the former taxi driver who became CNN's first sports anchor and served in that role for nearly two decades, died Saturday after a two-year struggle with bladder cancer, the cable network reported. He was 64.
He died peacefully at his New Mexico home, wife Cory told the network.
Nicholas Charles Nickeas grew up in Chicago, working late-night jobs in high school to help his family, according to CNN. He eventually went to Columbia College Chicago to study communications and drove a taxi to help pay his tuition.
He was still driving taxis in 1970 when he landed his first gig with WICS in Springfield, Ill. That's when he adopted the name Nick Charles at the urging of his news director, the network said.
Charles later left Springfield to work at local stations in Baltimore and Washington and then began at Atlanta-based CNN on the network's first day on June 1, 1980.
He made his name before a national audience teaming with Fred Hickman for almost 20 years on "Sports Tonight," a daily highlight show that battled with ESPN for viewers. Charles became such a popular TV personality that Topps put his face on a trading card, CNN reported.
With his well-coiffed, curly black hair and sharp-looking suits, Charles brought GQ-like style to CNN's broadcasts. But he also was known as a skilled interviewer who related easily to subjects while not being shy about asking tough questions.
In recent months, Charles served as an inspiration to many as he openly discussed his battle with cancer, with which he was diagnosed in August 2009. He made video diaries for his five-year-old daughter Giovanna to see in years to come.
Charles also is survived by three grown children from two previous marriages
Nick Charles
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