Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Henry Rollins: Embrace Your Inner Pussy (LA Weekly)
Please, you P-Gens, embrace your inner pussy and see that it is you who will take us forward. Those who birthed you are so obviously out of ideas. Listen to what they say, look at what they do. Then go be different.
Lucy Mangan explains why prostitution is NOT the same as any other career (Stylist)
Why aren't you a prostitute? […] Is it because you feel that you are substantially less likely to be attacked, raped or murdered in your chosen career than you would be exchanging sex with strangers for money? Is it because you'd rather not be controlled by a pimp? Is it because you'd rather choose whose penis goes in your body and when? Is it because prostitution is not at all the same as accountancy?
Tim: "HORROR BY LEWTON: GRAVE MATTERS" (Antagony & Ecstasy)
The Body Snatcher, which premiered early in the summer of 1945, and was the last of producer Val Lewton's movies to find release during World War II, represents the great sea change in the fortunes of the RKO B-picture unit where Lewton made himself one of the great names in cinema horror.
Tim: HORROR BY LEWTON: THERE IS NO BEAUTY HERE, ONLY DEATH AND DECAY" (Antagony & Ecstasy)
… many, perhaps in fact all, of [Val Lewton's] movie titles came down from the executives ready-made and test-marketed, and there was nothing he could do to change them. He could make any damn movie he wanted under that title, and often did so - and that is how we come up with I Walked with a Zombie, which I guarantee is not the movie you think it is, if you haven't seen it.
Lucy Mangan: Who's Afraid of Conceptual Art? review - a daft idea is not art (The Guardian)
Shards of sanity occasionally poked through the foaming sea of artistic madness in this exploration of 100 years of conceptualism.
Lucy Mangan: I say, chaps, the queerest thing has happened… (The Guardian)
The jolly old Famous Five are to have their language, like, updated, yeah?
Oliver Burkeman: Why you need to count time, not money (The Guardian)
What a new study reveals about this so-called dilemma of happiness.
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wrote:
answered:
has returned to semi-retired status.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Rudi Nine-Eleven
You know who ISN'T "genius?" Rudy Jerkoff Giuliani.
You know when, among THOUSANDS of times, Lumpy is a fool? When he listens to or takes advice from Rudy Jerkoff Giuliani.
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Courtesy the always astute Digby:
I can hardly believe it, but
this is what he said, defending Trump:
"Don't you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman?"
While Digby refers to Rudi Nine-Eleven as "Magoosolini", I prefer
Testa di cazzo.
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY TRAINWRECK.
MISTER PIGGY!
WHAT A MISERABLE SON OF A BTCH!
THE AGE OF THE "CUCK-SERVATIVE"
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Raccoons are really going at it tonight.
Reinvents Decrepit Prisons
France
The ad on the French finance ministry website is deadpan and succinct: "For sale: late 19th century prison in the centre of Grasse, 1,277.42 square metres (13,750 square feet). No garage or parking space. Needs renovating."
Prospective buyers of the site in southeast France are required to lodge a deposit of 50,000 euros ($56,000).
There are around 10 such notices for defunct prisons on the website, testament to a growing trend that has seen many urban jails turned into social housing or concert halls.
Since many are protected buildings they cannot be demolished. But this means those that find no buyer are left to rot.
France
Calls Final Game
Vin Scully
Vin Scully's iconic voice on the videoboard welcomed a sellout crowd to Game No. 162, the regular-season finale, yes, and more notably the last of his decorated, Hall of Fame broadcasting career.
Scully attended morning Mass in the ballpark as is his usual Sunday routine and then headed for his booth to work as he has done for an astounding 67 years - exactly 80 years after he became a Giants fan at age 8 in the Bronx.
''It was as if it was ordained,'' Scully said during San Francisco's 7-1 win that secured the Giants the second NL wild card. ''I hope you're enjoying it and I hope I'm not interrupting it too much.''
The 88-year-old Scully politely declined any kind of on-field celebration offered by the Giants. San Francisco then jumped to a 2-0 lead in the first.
Vin Scully
Virtual Reality Helps Net Criminals
Auschwitz
Slipping on a virtual reality headset, the indelible images come into view: the steel rails, the imposing brick gatehouse, the rows of identical barracks, the gas chambers, the crematoria.
Thanks to the work of the Bavarian state crime office (LKA) in Munich, German prosecutors and police investigating the last living Nazi war criminals can now immerse themselves in a highly precise 3D model of Auschwitz.
The VR death camp offers 21st-century fact-finding technology for the final Holocaust trials, in a twilight bid by the German justice system to address the atrocities committed seven decades ago.
"It has often been the case that suspects say they worked at Auschwitz but didn't really know what was going on," Jens Rommel, head of the federal office investigating Nazi war crimes, told AFP.
"Legally, the question is about intent: must a suspect have known that people were being taken to the gas chambers or shot? This model is a very good and very modern tool for the investigation because it can help answer that question."
Auschwitz
Gruesome Injury
Lindsay Lohan
Lindsay Lohan was injured in a boating accident over the weekend. "This is why I shouldn't try to help get the rope to anchor the boat. I lost half of my finger. ...," she wrote on Instagram while sharing a picture of her injury.
In the graphic photo that has since been deleted, LiLo's hand was coated with blood. According to TMZ, she severed the tip of her ring finger. She was rushed to the emergency room to undergo a surgery to have it reattached.
The accident happened when she was hanging out with some friends in the ocean off Turkey. She reportedly fell into the water when trying to pull up the boat anchor. She sliced her finger when trying to untangle herself from the anchor and get back in the boat.
Lindsay Lohan
Trump's A 'Genius'
Rudi Nine-Eleven
In the wake of a New York Times report revealing that Donald Trump (R-Pinche Güerito) claimed a $916 million dollar loss in 1995 according to leaked tax forms, surrogate for the GOP presidential nominee Rudy Giuliani said, "he's a genius."
Giuliani (R-Stronzo), a former New York City mayor, said Trump took advantage of tax laws as, he said, a good businessman should.
"He would have been a fool not to take advantage" of the laws, he ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on "This Week"
Giuliani also emphasized that what Trump did was "perfectly legal."
As to the size of the business loss that Trump claimed, Giuliani cited the Republican presidential candidate's 1987 bestselling book "The Art of The Deal," that "every great man has had failures."
Rudi Nine-Eleven
Ocean Warriors Unveil New Ship
Sea Shepherd
With its distinctive pirate-like flag flying from the mast, the sleek, high-speed concrete grey Ocean Warrior is the latest weapon in a bitter war between marine conservationists and Japan's whaling fleet.
"The one thing that we were missing in our fleet was a vessel with speed and endurance," said Alex Cornelissen, chief executive of Sea Shepherd Global.
"With the Ocean Warrior, we have a ship that can outmatch any poaching vessel on the high seas," said Cornelissen, also the captain, giving AFP a tour of the ship before its departure from the Netherlands this weekend bound for Australia.
Bought at a cost of 8.3 million euros ($9.3 million) funded by public lotteries in Britain, The Netherlands and Sweden, Sea Shepherd Global is counting on the vessel in its upcoming battle to save the whales in the icy waters of the Southern Ocean.
The new vessel, designed by a Dutch shipbuilder, took 18 months to build. Stretching some 54 metres (yards), it is a state-of-the-art ship, equipped with hybrid propulsion to extend its range, four powerful engines and a helicopter landing pad.
Sea Shepherd
Gay Catholics Test Church
Poland
When gay and lesbian Catholics launched a campaign this month to ask for acceptance in the Polish church, the backlash was swift and uncompromising.
Adopting the gesture of a handshake that worshippers make during mass, the "Sign of Peace" poster campaign shows one hand with a rainbow bracelet representing the fight for gay rights and the other with a rosary for prayers.
Affronted bishops issued a statement on September 14 instructing the faithful "not to participate in the campaign... because it waters down the explicit demands of the Gospel."
The handshake sign of peace, they warned, was an "expression of acceptance for a person, but not of their sins, whatever they may be."
Others have gone further, crudely labelling the campaigners "homo heretics."
Poland
Ivory Trade
United Nations
The United Nations on Sunday called for the shutdown of all legal domestic ivory markets as it looks to combat poaching and put pressure on countries that continue to trade in elephant tusks.
Member states of the U.N.'s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, known as CITES, agreed on a resolution that calls for legislative, regulatory and enforcement measures to be taken to close legal domestic ivory markets around the world.
Legal ivory markets, such as those in China and Japan, are often accused of fuelling elephant poaching because illegal ivory is sometimes sold through them.
Elephant numbers have continued to decline as poaching surges, with Africa's elephant population falling around 20 percent between 2006 and 2015, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said in a report.
United Nations
Weekend Box Office
"Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"
In a box-office rarity, three acclaimed, original films from studios opened in theaters over the weekend. Only one caught on.
Tim Burton's latest fantastical oddity, "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children," debuted with $28.5 million, leading North America ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Peter Berg's well-reviewed disaster movie "Deepwater Horizon," about the 2010 oil rig explosion, however, failed to tap North American moviegoers, opening with an estimated $20.6 million. And Disney's uplifting chess prodigy tale "Queen of Katwe," starring David Oyelowo and Lupita Nyong'o, brought in a dismal $2.6 million in its national expansion.
Originally slated for release in summer 2015, the Zach Galifianakis, Kristen Wiig heist comedy "Masterminds" sat on the shelf for a year while its distributor, Relativity Media, went through chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It opened with a mediocre $6.6 million.
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. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children," $28.5 million ($36.5 million international).
2. "Deepwater Horizon," $20.6 million ($12.4 million international).
3. "The Magnificent Seven," $15.7 million ($14.8 million international).
4. "Storks," $13.8 million ($14.6 million international).
5. "Sully," $8.4 million ($6.6 million international).
6. "Masterminds," $6.6 million ($1.7 million international).
7. "Queen of Katwe," $2.6 million.
8. "Don't Breathe," $2.4 million ($3.8 million international).
9. "Bridget Jones's Baby," $2.3 million ($19 million international).
10. "Snowden," $2 million ($1.2 million international).
"Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"
In Memory
Oscar Brand
Oscar Brand, a longtime force on the American folk scene whose radio program "Folksong Festival" showcased Woody Guthrie and a young Bob Dylan among music greats and newcomers, has died, his manager said Saturday. He was 96.
Brand died Friday at his home in Great Neck, New York, after two bouts with pneumonia in recent weeks, said Doug Yeager, his longtime manager and friend.
He had been hospitalized before the decision was made to bring him home, Yeager said. Brand taped his final "Folksong Festival" for public radio station WNYC two weeks ago, and it aired Saturday, Sept. 24.
The 70 years Brand spent with "Folksong Festival" earned him and the program a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest-airing radio show with the same host (Guinness lists the program's debut year as 1945). Brand did the show - a casual mix of song, conversation and humor - as a public service: He never accepted payment for his work.
He was honored with a George Foster Peabody Award for decades "in service to the music and messages of folk performers and fans around the world," according to the 2005 announcement.
A native of Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Canada, Brand moved to the United States with his parents as a child. He became part of the American folk music revival in the 1940s, collaborating with Guthrie, Lead Belly, Josh White, Burl Ives and Pete Seeger. Brand's radio guests included Dylan, Harry Belafonte, Odetta, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Judy Collins and Joni Mitchell.
During the anti-communist fervor of the 1940s and '50s, Brand continued to invite politically active artists, including those who were blacklisted. Brand was not a Communist Party member, but he felt compelled to support free speech, according to a biography provided by his manager.
Brand's work for the theater included scoring the Kennedy Center's Bicentennial musical "Sing American Sing," writing and scoring ballets for Agnes DeMille and writing the Broadway musicals "A Joyful Noise" and "The Education of Hyman Kaplan."
For TV, he created and hosted Canada's 1960s music series "Let's Sing Out," which featured then-fledgling artists including Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen and Harry Chapin. His U.S. TV shows included a 2001 PBS tribute to Guthrie, "Woody & Me."
Brand also made award-winning documentary films and recorded a variety of albums, including "Presidential Campaign Songs 1776-1976: Sung by Oscar Brand" and "Bawdy Songs and Backroom Ballads." He wrote pop songs for Doris Day, Ella Fitzgerald and others.
His survivors include his wife of 46 years, Karen, and their son, along with three children from a previous marriage and grandchildren.
Oscar Brand
In Memory
Neville Marriner
Conductor Neville Marriner, who led the Academy of St Martin in the Fields to become one of the world's most-recorded classical music groups, has died, the academy said Sunday. He was 92.
Marriner, a violinist in the London Symphony Orchestra, joined with several other musicians in 1959 to form a chamber group, which was intended to perform without a leader. The group's mouthful of a name, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, was inspired by the church in central London where they performed.
The academy built its reputation with stylish performances of baroque and classical repertoire: Bach, Handel, Mozart and Haydn. From its beginnings, with 18 players, it grew to a full-size orchestra with an affiliated chorus, and it has made more than 500 recordings.
The group's soundtrack for Milos Forman's 1984 Oscar-winning "Amadeus," composed mainly of Mozart pieces, sold millions, becoming one of the best-selling classical recordings of all time.
Born in Lincoln, England, to a musical family, Marriner began playing violin at an early age, and won a place at the Royal College of Music. A key influence on his career was his association with the musicologist Thurston Dart, a seminal figure in the early music revival.
Dart and Marriner, who met when both were convalescing from war-time service, teamed up to play duos and worked in a group called the Jacobean Ensemble.
Marriner was principal second violin in the London Symphony Orchestra when he was one of the founders of the academy.
He became music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra from 1968-77. He then became music director of the Minnesota Orchestra 1979-1986, and directed the Radio Symphony Orchestra in Stuttgart, Germany from 1984-89.
Marriner married Mary Elizabeth Sims in 1955. He had a son and a daughter from his first marriage.
Neville Marriner
In Memory
Richard Trentlage
Richard Trentlage, whose everlasting claim to fame was writing "The Oscar Mayer Wiener Song," thought to the longest-running advertising jingle ever, has died. He was 87.
Trentlage, a professional jingle writer, died Sept. 21 in Libertyville, Ill., his family announced.
The Chicago native also was responsible for "Wow! It sure doesn't taste like tomato juice," for V-8; "Buckle up for safety, buckle up!" for a National Safety Council spot for using seat belts; and "McDonald's is your kind of place!" his relatives noted. But none of these has had the lasting impact of his ditty for Oscar Mayer.
Trentlage learned about a jingle contest that the meat products company was having less than 24 hours before a deadline, but that was more than enough time for him to pen these four lines:
"Oh I'd love to be an Oscar Mayer Wiener
That is what I truly wish to be
'Cause if I were an Oscar Mayer Wiener
Everyone would be in love with me."
"The Oscar Mayer Wiener Song" debuted in 1963 and was in use for more than 50 years. He received residuals all along, and the tune "was the biggest thrill I've had in my life," he told the Chicago Tribune in 1998.
Survivors also include his wife of 33 years, Jacqueline, his other children David, Tom and Becky, and 19 grandchildren.
Richard Trentlage
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