Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Craziest Halloween Scare/Prank Trick Ever! Head Drop Illusion (YouTube)
Magician Rich Ferguson doing a Halloween head drop trick on the streets of his home town San Luis Obispo. During the day, this is a great illusion, but during night and in a more vulnerable setting, this freaks people out BIG TIME! Having way too much fun this season with pranks and street magic! Watch out, we are coming for you;)
Women Tell Romney: You Don't Own Me (YouTube)
Mitt Romney and the Republican Party are determined to overturn Roe V. Wade. Romney has not supported equal pay for women (The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act). Romney has vowed to defund Planned Parenthood. Romney has vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Romney doesn't want health care to cover birth control. Romney says same sex marriage should be banned with a Constitutional Amendment.?Women, let's rise up. Our vote alone can win this election.
Mark Shields: "Yes, I'm a 'College' Dropout" (Creators Syndicate)
Because each state gets two electoral votes for its two U.S. senators and an electoral vote for each of its House members, every state, regardless of population, has a minimum of three electoral votes. This means that Wyoming, which in the most recent U.S. Census had 568,300 residents, has three electoral votes, and California, with 37,341,989 residents (which awards it 53 House members), has 55 electoral votes. As Bill Clinton might suggest, look at the arithmetic: Wyoming gets one electoral vote for every 189,493 residents, while it takes 678,945 Californians to get a single electoral vote. This is indefensible.
Ted Heistman: How to be "Stealth" Homeless (Disinformation)
"There, but for the grace of God, go I" goes the old canard, usually in reference to a disheveled homeless person, dressed in rags sitting on a street corner begging for change and smelling of b.o.
Henry Rollins: The Mississippi Blues (LA Weekly)
Mississippi is the state with the highest percentage of "technically obese" adults. That makes me think of the FLOTUS and how she once brought up the topic of child obesity to the American people and the temporary governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, then accused Ms. Obama of trying to outlaw dessert.
Alexis Petridis: Justin Timberlake's wedding to remember (Guardian)
With a mere $6.5m in the kitty, it was always going to be tough to make it really special. But one guest came up with the perfect answer: a video mocking poor people.
Sasha Grey: Music is just like the porn industry (Guardian)
Sasha Grey has starred in 270 adult films. Now she is fronting the experimental electronic band aTelecine. But, she tells Ben Beaumont-Thomas, these two worlds are not so different after all.
Steven Pinker: The Coach Who Never Paid Retail (Slate)
Red Auerbach (1917-2006), from "Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame."
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
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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'
Sunday Afternoon Matinee
Nosferatu
The kid & I attended a 90th anniversary screening of the silent classic 'Nosferatu' at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, sponsored by the American Cinematheque and the Goethe Institut.
The Egyptian was built 90 years ago (opened on 18 October, 1922) by master showman Sid Grauman, who also built the theater across the street, Grauman's Chinese.
There was a live pianist, Cliff Retallick, playing a beautiful baby grand Blüthner that had been used by Henry Mancini for over 20 years.
A newly restored print, the story cards were a vivid, almost neon green, and in German - old script, at that.
The Goethe Institut provided a 'story-teller' to translate, and while profoundly adept at translating, he seemed unfamiliar with the Gothic script (not that it's been used for nearly 70 years).
OTOH, it added a dash of charm, and demonstrated that Murnau made a great movie that can be understood, without language, 90 years later.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and the opposite of humid.
The Rise of the Super-Rich
1%
The top 1 percent of Americans are getting a bigger piece of the economic pie - and part of the reason may be Republicans in Congress, according to a new study.
The study, detailed this month in the journal American Sociological Review, shows that the income share of the top 1 percent grew rapidly after 1980 - from 10 percent in 1981 to 23.5 percent in 2007, an increase of 135 percentage points. (Since 2007, the wealth held at the top has decreased a bit, due to the financial meltdown of 2008.)
Study co-author Thomas Volscho, an assistant professor of sociology at CUNY-College of Staten Island, finds a Republican majority in Congress is one of the main reasons for the widening rich-poor gap. However, other experts say one factor cannot explain the rise of the 1 percent, and rather a handful of reasons, such as globalization and even technology, play roles.
Volscho said he got interested in the topic when he read about gilded-age mansions on Long Island and realized that America was living through another gilded age.
He combed through house price index data, IRS numbers (taxes paid) and census data, finding a few factors that may have led to the rise of the super-rich: Congressional shifts to the Republican Party, diminishing union membership, lower tax rates for the top 2 percent of Americans, and financial asset bubbles in stock and real-estate markets.
1%
Booed In Louisiana Concert
Madonna
Madonna drew boos and triggered a walkout by several concertgoers after she touted President Barack Obama on her "MDNA Tour" in New Orleans.
The Material Girl asked during Saturday night's performance: "Who's registered to vote?" She added: "I don't care who you vote for as long as you vote for Obama." Drawing boos in touting Obama over Republican Mitt Romney, Madonna followed: "Seriously, I don't care who you vote for ... Do not take this privilege for granted. Go vote."
Madonna is often outspoken. Some Colorado fans, mindful of a mass shooting there, complained she used a fake gun to shoot a masked gunman in a recent concert act in Denver. A Madonna concert in Paris in July drew ire when a video showed a swastika on a politician's forehead.
Madonna
Memorabilia Auctioned
Rolling Stones
An assortment of Rolling Stones memorabilia and artwork provided by Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood and his ex-wife was sold in a two-day auction, Julien's Auctions said on Sunday.
Among the items were a white leather coat worn by Wood that sold for $8,960, and a lithograph of Eric Clapton drawn by Wood that features his signature as well as Clapton's that fetched $5,120.
Despite being made of cardboard, a guitar cutout gifted to Wood by Keith Richards sold for $6,875. The real thing commanded almost nine times that price, with a 1955 Fender Stratocaster guitar often played on stage by Wood bringing in $60,800.
Ronnie and Jo Wood were married for 23 years before separating in 2008 when Ronnie left her for a young cocktail waitress named Ekaterina Ivanova. The couple's divorce was finalized in 2011.
Rolling Stones
"Light/The Holocaust and Humanity Project"
Ballet
Within a small rectangle of light, nearly a dozen dancers writhed and convulsed on the stage, pressed together by imaginary walls denoting some kind of death chamber.
For 12 minutes, a deafening air raid siren reverberates through the theater, as one-by-one the dancers fall out of the light, and roll into the darkness. The abstract scene with its single spotlight could represent a church in Rwanda, a labor camp in Cambodia or a gas chamber in Europe.
Choreographer Stephen Mills said his ballet, entitled "Light/The Holocaust and Humanity Project," is about all of those places - and any place - where intolerance turns into violence and genocide.
Mills created the confrontational, distinctly contemporary ballet in 2005 after spending 18 months researching the Holocaust, when Germany's Nazi party exterminated more than 6 million Jews during World War II. The ballet is set to contemporary music by Steve Reich, Evelyn Glennie, Michael Gordon, Arvo Part and Philip Glass.
Critics raved about the piece when it debuted in Austin, and the Pittsburgh Ballet performed it in 2010. Ballet Austin is now taking it on the road, performing in Miami next month, at Washington's Kennedy Center in June and at three Israeli cities in September. The Colorado Ballet will perform it in March.
Ballet
Savile Row
Gary Glitter
Police investigating child sex abuse allegations against the late BBC television host Jimmy Savile arrested former glam rock star and convicted sex offender Gary Glitter on Sunday, British media reported, raising further questions about whether Savile was at the center of a broader pedophile ring.
Police would not directly identify the suspect arrested Sunday, but media including the BBC and Press Association reported he was the 68-year-old Glitter.
The musician, whose real name is Paul Gadd, made it big with the crowd-pleasing hit "Rock & Roll (Part 2)," a mostly instrumental anthem that has been a staple at American sporting events, thanks to its catchy "hey" chorus. But he fell into disgrace after being convicted on child abuse charges in Vietnam.
Sunday's arrest was the first in a widening scandal over Savile's alleged sex crimes. Hundreds of potential victims have come forward since police began the investigation into sex abuse allegations against Savile, a much-loved children's TV presenter and disc jockey who died at the age of 84 last year.
Glitter, known for his shiny jumpsuits and bouffant wigs, was jailed in Britain in 1999 for possessing child pornography, and convicted in 2006 in Vietnam of committing "obscene acts with children" - offenses involving girls aged 10 and 11. He was deported back to Britain in 2008.
Gary Glitter
Defends Rapists For Papists
Newtie
This morning on "This Week" former House Speaker Newt Gingrich defended the controversial comments made by Richard Mourdock, in which he suggested that pregnancies resulting from rape were "intended" by God. Gingrich said that the Indiana Republican Senate candidate's words reflected the position of "virtually every Catholic" in the United States.
"My response is, if you listen to what Mourdock actually said, he said what virtually every Catholic and every fundamentalist in the country believes, life begins at conception," Gingrich said. "Now, this seems to be fixated by the Democrats, but the radical on abortion is Obama, who as a state senator voted three times in favor of allowing doctors to kill babies in the eighth and ninth month who were born, having survived late-term abortion."
Gingrich further defended Mourdock and asked why some people, including President Obama's deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter, could not "get over" the comments.
Gingrich appeared on "This Week" following Cutter, who criticized Mitt Romney for not asking Mourdock to pull an ad featuring the GOP presidential nominee.
Newtie
New Saint Stirs Pride, Skepticism
Kateri Tekakwitha
Some traditional Mohawks are treating the naming of the nation's first Native American saint with skepticism and fear that the Roman Catholic Church is using it to shore up its image and marginalize traditional spiritual practices.
They see the story of Kateri Tekakwitha as yet another reminder of colonial atrocities and religious oppression.
The daughter of a Mohawk chief and a Catholic Algonquin woman, Kateri was born in 1656 about 40 miles northwest of Albany and in the heart of the Iroquois Confederacy to which the Mohawks belong. She was orphaned at age 4 when smallpox wiped out her family and much of her village and left her blinded and disfigured.
A Catholic convert at 20, she settled in Kahnawake, a Mohawk settlement south of Montreal where Jesuits had a mission and where she and other women performed mortification rituals such as self-flogging as part of their faith. At her death at the age of 24, Kateri's smallpox scars reportedly vanished and later she was reported to appear before several people. She is buried at a shrine on Kahnawake.
Kateri Tekakwitha
Gallery Show For Accused Picasso Vandal
Uriel Landeros
A Houston art gallery has raised the ire of the local art community by staging a show of works by a 22-year-old who's been on the lam since being charged with spray-painting a Pablo Picasso painting.
Despite the uproar, Cueto James Art Gallery owner James Perez expects a full house for Friday's opening of 12 works by Uriel Landeros.
Landeros was charged with felony graffiti and felony criminal mischief for allegedly defacing "Woman in a Red Armchair" at Houston's Menil Collection on June 13. A video posted on YouTube showed a man holding a stencil up to the work of art and spray-painting it, leaving behind an image of a bullfighter, a bull and the word "conquista," Spanish for conquest.
Perez, who said he was interested in Landeros' work prior to the vandalism charge, said he found the act inspiring.
Uriel Landeros
Weekend Box Office
'Argo'
It took three weeks, but "Argo" finally found its way to the top of the box office.
The Warner Bros. thriller from director and star Ben Affleck, inspired by the real-life rescue of six U.S. embassy workers during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, made nearly $12.4 million this weekend, according to Sunday studio estimates. "Argo" had been in second place the past two weeks and has now made about $60.8 million total.
Debuting at No. 3 was the sprawling, star-studded "Cloud Atlas," which made a disappointing $9.4 million. The nearly three-hour drama, also from Warner Bros., was co-directed by siblings Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer and features an ensemble cast including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Hugh Grant playing multiple roles over six story lines.
It was a soft weekend all around, though, with several newcomers opening poorly, Hollywood.com box-office analyst Paul Dergarabedian pointed out. The horror sequel "Silent Hill: Revelation 3-D" from Open Road Films debuted at No. 5 with $8 million and the Paramount Halloween comedy "Fun Size" arrived in 10th place with just over $4 million. "Chasing Mavericks," an inspirational surfing drama from Fox 2000, didn't even open in the top 12 - it came in at No. 13 with $2.2 million.
Estimated ticket sales are 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. "Argo," $12.4 million.
2. "Hotel Transylvania," $9.5 million.
3. "Cloud Atlas," $9.4 million.
4. "Paranormal Activity 4," $8.7 million.
5. (tie) "Silent Hill: Revelation 3-D," $8 million.
6. "Taken 2," $8 million.
7. "Here Comes the Boom," $5.5 million.
8. "Sinister," $5.07 million.
9. "Alex Cross," $5.05 million.
10. "Fun Size," $4.1 million.
'Argo'
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