Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Marc Dion: Newt Gingrich and the Long View to Hell (Creators Syndicate)
Tempering the long view with the short view is why you (or, at least, I) will give a quarter to a bum on the street. It maybe does the bum no good, but the quarter is what he wants at the moment and it's what you have at the moment. The long view is what makes you walk past the bum without putting a hand in the pocket of your officeworker khakis. He will die soon with or without your two bits.
I, Anonymous: Your Voice Makes Me a Misogynist (The Stranger)
Stop your screeching, bitch. As a woman, I get it: It can be hard to grasp authority and make men listen to you, so sometimes you have to be a hard-ass.
Henry Rollins: Is 'Raw Power' the American answer to 'Exile on Main St.' (LA Weekly)
A chance to see Iggy Pop -- the Heavyweight Champion of rock and roll -- causes three things to happen to me every time. First, the excitement I feel before Iggy hits stage is unlike any I have for any other band. Second, the amount of adrenaline coursing through me when the band is ripping through their set makes me feel like I am plugged into life's main circuit. Third, it takes days for me to come down. I have to listen to Stooges and Iggy records constantly until I finally level out.
Troy Patterson: On Kermit (Slate)
His approach to journalism; his affinities with Woody Allen; the shy reediness of his voice; the unfortunate Muppet Babies phase.
Stephen Rebello: Five Things You Didn't Know About Alfred Hitchcock (Neatorama)
1. Alfred Hitchcock never won a Best Director Oscar, yet sixteen of his films garnered fifty nominations, his 1940 classic Rebecca won Best Picture, and he was nominated as Best Director for 'Rebecca,' 'Suspicion,' 'Spellbound,' 'Lifeboat,' 'Rear Window' and 'Psycho.' "Always a bridesmaid," he philosophized, "never a bride."
Catherine Shoard: "No knight required: in a first for Disney, a female warrior fronts 'Brave,' its latest animation" (Guardian)
Is this the end of the soppy princess who always needs a man?
Cath Clarke: "Chloë Moretz: 'I'm not cussing and killing people - I'm normal'" (Guardian)
From kicking ass and drinking blood to making kids movies with Martin Scorsese, Chloë Moretz tells Cath Clarke why she's excited to shoot a film she can finally legally buy a ticket to see.
Roger Ebert: Review of "Citizen Ruth" (R; 3 stars)
One of the danger signals of substance abuse, I'm pretty sure, is finding yourself sniffing patio sealant. Ruth Stoops, the heroine of "Citizen Ruth," gets an even clearer signal: When the arresting cops already know your name, that's a real tip-off you have a problem.
Roger Ebert: Review of "Tyrannosaur" (3 ½ stars; unrated)
This isn't the kind of movie that even has hope enough to contain a message. There is no message, only the reality of these wounded personalities. When I was young, the British Angry Young Men had emerged on stage and screen, and I thought I got the message, which was that in the face of a pitiless society, an Angry Young Man must revolt. I think the message of "Tyrannosaur" is that some men are born angry, others experience something terrible to make them that way, and society's pity is wasted.
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."
wrote:
answered:
Reader Suggestions
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Reader Suggestion
The Future
Hi, Marty.
I think this version of the future is coming soon. It's not a comfortable vision. A mixed bag, certainly.
Dust Net
David Dvorkin
Blog
Thanks, David!
BadtotheboneBob
N Korea
BBC News - N Korea furious at South's Christmas lights plan
North Korea has warned South Korea of "unexpected consequences" if it lights up a Christmas tree-shaped tower near their tense border. The North's state-run Uriminjokkiri website said it would amount to a form of "psychological warfare"...
I suspect the reason why is that North Korean stores don't have any cool Chinese made gadgets, toys and geegaws to buy even if the people had any money to buy them. Which they don't. So they're mad...
BadtotheboneBob
Thanks, B2tbBob!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Mostly overcast, but no rain - yet.
Gives In To Religious Insanity, Pulls Ads
Lowe's
A decision by retail giant Lowe's Home Improvement to pull ads from a reality show about American Muslims following protests from an evangelical Christian group has sparked criticism and calls for a boycott against the chain.
The retailer stopped advertising on TLC's "All-American Muslim" after a conservative group known as the Florida Family Association complained, saying the program was "propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda's clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values."
The show premiered last month and chronicles the lives of five families from Dearborn, Mich., a Detroit suburb with a large Muslim and Arab-American population.
The Florida group sent three emails to its members, asking them to petition Lowe's to pull its advertising. Its website was updated to say that "supporters' emails to advertisers make a difference."
Lowe's
Not Happy With Lowe's
Ted Lieu
A state senator from Southern California was considering calling for a boycott of Lowe's stores after the home improvement chain pulled its advertising from a reality show about Muslim-Americans.
Calling the retail giant's decision "un-American" and "naked religious bigotry," Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, told The Associated Press on Sunday that he would also consider legislative action if Lowe's doesn't apologize to Muslims and reinstate its ads. The senator sent a letter outlining his complaints to Lowe's Chief Executive Officer Robert A. Niblock.
The retail giant stopped advertising on TLC's "All-American Muslim" after a group called the Florida Family Association complained the show was "propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda's clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values."
In addition to an apology and reinstatement of the ads, Lieu said he hoped Lowe's would make an outreach to the community about bias and bigotry.
Ted Lieu
Visited 'SNL'
Alec Baldwin
Posing as the airline pilot of the flight he was kicked off of, Alec Baldwin apologized to himself on "Saturday Night Live."
The actor appeared on the sketch program's "Weekend Update" on Saturday night to lampoon Tuesday's incident, in which he was kicked off an American Airlines flight for refusing to stop playing a mobile phone game before takeoff.
As a Southern, mustachioed airline pilot, Baldwin issued an apology for the incident. The joke, though, was how obvious the ploy was.
The actor referred to himself as an "American treasure" who was playing "a word game for smart people."
"Weekend Update" host Seth Meyers repeatedly questioned the thinly veiled performance, asking Baldwin, "Are you sure this is the right way to handle this?
Alec Baldwin
CBS Expanding To 1 Hour
"Face the Nation"
The CBS Sunday political talk show "Face the Nation" will soon match its rivals in length.
Anchor Bob Schieffer said Sunday that the show will become an hour in April. It currently airs for a half an hour.
Both of its competitors, NBC's "Meet the Press" and ABC's "This Week," are already an hour in length. CBS is making the change at a time "Face the Nation" has been doing well in the ratings.
Schieffer didn't mention it, but it's not entirely certain the change will be permanent. CBS News President David Rhodes says the extended length will last at least through the political conventions next summer, and then be evaluated.
"Face the Nation"
Undercover Police Spied On Protesters
Occupy LA
Undercover police officers infiltrated Occupy LA's tent city last month to spy on people they suspected of stockpiling human waste and crude weapons for resisting an eventual eviction, police and city government sources said.
Authorities also used security cameras mounted outside City Hall, where the camp was located, and monitored publicly available Internet chatter and video on social-networking sites such as Twitter, sources said.
Evidence gathered through the surveillance led to more than 40 arrests for drug use, public intoxication and other offenses in the weeks before police shut down the camp on November 30, one senior official in the Los Angeles Police Department said.
They insisted that covert surveillance of the camp was aimed not at anti-Wall Street activists exercising their constitutional right to freedom of expression but at those they considered anti-government extremists bent on violence.
Occupy LA
Auction
Michael Jackson
Contents of the mansion where Michael Jackson's lifeless body was found by convicted killer Dr. Conrad Murray go under the auction hammer next week, closing one chapter on a tragic saga that started in 2009 and ended last month with his former physician behind bars.
Some 500 lots of mostly paintings, furniture and ornaments are for sale from the Bel Air home Jackson rented while preparing for a series of comeback concerts in London. But only a handful of the items bear a poignant but personal connection to the singer, his three children and famous family.
"Even though these weren't items that belonged to him, they were items that surrounded him in the final months of his life. Anything associated with Michael Jackson is highly collectible," said auctioneer Darren Julien.
The ornate headboard on the bed where Jackson's body was found on June 25, 2009 was removed from the December 17 sale last month at the request of Jackson's family.
Michael Jackson
TV Code Deal
AFTRA
Television and Radio Artists announced Friday night that it had reached a tentative agreement with the Big Four broadcast networks on a new network TV code deal.
Covering all network programming except scripted prime-time shows, AFTRA claims the new deal achieved its objective of gaining a 1 percent increase in employer contributions to its health and retirement funds, a contribution that now stands at a rate of 16.5 percent.
Wage increases stand at 2 percent over the life of the three-year deal, which is in line with the pattern the Screen Actors Guild set last year when it reached its core agreement with producers.
The deal also increases minimum hazard pay for dancers from $80 to $100 per day, and from $100 to $125 per program.
AFTRA
Airport Search Complaints Prompt Politicians
Airports
Two New York politicians urged the Transportation Security Administration on Sunday to provide passenger advocates on site at airport screenings after four elderly women complained of intrusive searches by security agents in recent months.
Senator Charles Schumer and State Senator Michael Gianaris told Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano and TSA Administrator John Pistole in a letter that an on-site passenger advocate would help strike the right balance between security and protecting vulnerable travelers.
The call came after several elderly women came forward in the busy travel weeks around Thanksgiving to complain they were "strip searched by TSA agents", including three at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, the letter said.
TSA blogger Bob Burns said the TSA was in the process of establishing a toll-free phone number dedicated to travelers who may require assistance during screening and which could be called to "get guidance and information about screening."
Schumer and Gianaris asked instead for a member of the screening crew to be trained as a passenger advocate who could intervene as problems arose. They also asked for an investigation into the women's complaints, which were detailed in the letter.
Airports
Cut Heating Aid To Poor
Northeast States
Mary Power is 92 and worried about surviving another frigid New England winter because deep cuts in federal home heating assistance benefits mean she probably can't afford enough heating oil to stay warm.
She lives in a drafty trailer in Boston's West Roxbury neighborhood and gets by on $11,148 a year in pension and Social Security benefits. Her heating aid help this year will drop from $1,035 to $685. With rising heating oil prices, it probably will cost her more than $3,000 for enough oil to keep warm unless she turns her thermostat down to 60 degrees, as she plans.
"I will just have to crawl into bed with the covers over me and stay there," said Power, a widow who worked as a cashier and waitress until she was 80. "I will do what I have to do."
Thousands of poor people across the Northeast are bracing for a difficult winter with substantially less home heating aid coming from the federal government.
Several Northeast states already have reduced heating aid benefits to families as Congress considers cutting more than $1 billion from last year's $4.7 billion Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program that served nearly 9 million households.
Northeast States
Stone Workshops Silenced
China
Mournful ancient Roman lovers, a boy Mozart and half a dozen angels lie in weeds behind the padlocked gates of an abandoned sculpture workshop in Dangcheng town, victims of economic waves rippling across the world to this corner of northern China.
Dangcheng applied the traditional stone-carving skills of this rocky part of Hebei province to boom as an exporter of ornate statues, busts, reliefs and fountains to Europe and North America. Now the town is struggling with the deep slump in once vibrant markets, especially Italy and other euro zone countries.
"The boss ran away, they say. He went broke a year or two ago. Don't know where he went," said Lu Jiguang, a brawny mason from a nearby workshop who stopped by the locked gate.
Dangcheng, a town of 20,000 people 240 km (150 miles) southwest of Beijing, is a microcosm of the risks that slowing exports pose for China -- risks that a commerce official laid out this week.
China
Weekend Box Office
"New Year's Eve"
Hollywood's holidays are off to a dreadful start: Fewer people went to the movies the last two weekends than during the box-office hush that followed the Sept. 11 attacks 10 years ago.
Domestic revenues tumbled to a 2011 low of about $77 million this weekend, when the star-filled, holiday-themed romance "New Year's Eve" debuted at No. 1 with a weak $13.7 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Divided by this year's average ticket price of $7.96, the combined $158 million haul means only an estimated 19.8 million people went to the movies the last two weekends. Based on the average ticket price, this year's top-grossing film, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," drew more people all by itself over opening weekend.
Revenues this past weekend are down 17 percent compared to the same period last year, when business totaled $91.8 million, led by a $24 million debut for "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader."
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. "New Year's Eve," $13.7 million ($12.9 million international).
2. "The Sitter," $10 million.
3. "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1," $7.9 million ($19.8 million international).
4. "The Muppets," $7.1 million ($1.2 million international).
5. "Arthur Christmas," $6.6 million ($14.3 million international).
6. "Hugo," $6.1 million.
7. "The Descendants," $4.4 million.
8. "Happy Feet Two," $3.8 million ($10.1 million international).
9. "Jack and Jill," $3.2 million.
10. "Immortals," $2.4 million.
"New Year's Eve"
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
