Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Chinese New Year (nytimes.com)
Chinese mercantilism is a growing problem, and the victims of that mercantilism have little to lose from a trade confrontation.
Nicholas Kristof: Sparking a Savings Revolution (nytimes.com)
There's an old saying about poverty: Give me a fish, and I'll eat for a day. Give me a fishing rod, and I'll eat for a lifetime.
Mark Morford: Dear 2010; Be not like 2009 (sfgate.com)
Please let us never go through sh-t like that ever again
Motoko Rich: Comeback Planned for Girls' Book Series (nytimes.com)
Taking a page from Broadway and George Lucas, Scholastic Inc., the children's book publisher, is trying for a revival - with a prequel attached.
Mick Hume: Why Marlowe is still the chief of detectives (spiked-online.com)
Fifty years after Raymond Chandler died, we need his 'shop-soiled' Galahad Philip Marlowe as much as ever to put our mixed-up world to rights.
Steve Paul: The top books of the year (McClatchy Newspapers)
Ask a roomful of people to name their favorite book of this or any year and you are likely to get a roomful of answers. We polled some of our regular book critics and staffers to compile this list of the top books of the year.
Bill Forman: Born under a blues sign (csindy.com)
Lurrie Bell carries on a family legacy and lives to tell about it.
How to razzle dazzle 'em with Jerry Mitchell, the musical hitmaker (guardian.co.uk)
What's the secret to a great musical? As Legally Blonde hits the stage, its director, the serial hit-maker Jerry Mitchell, talks about hope, creativity - and laundry to Maddy Costa.
Peter Graves succeeds in an impossible mission (latimes.com)
The actor, recently honored at the Ojai Film Festival and with a new star on the Walk of Fame, has been acting in Hollywood for 60 years.
Robert W. Butler: Attack of the 3-D experience (McClatchy Newspapers)
Like it or loathe it, the new year in movies will be dominated by one thing: 3-D.
Rachel Abramowitz: Of fate, heaven and 'Lovely Bones' (latimes.com)
Director Peter Jackson gave Susie Salmon a trippy afterlife in his adaptation of the bestseller, a film he says he was destined to make.
An Englishman in New York (guardian.co.uk)
Three decades on, John Hurt slips effortlessly into Quentin Crisp's soul again, says Sam Wollaston.
noted:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Contributor Suggestion
Year of the Cartoon
You could say this was the Year of the Cartoon. Some of the biggest names ever to be animated celebrated milestone birthdays in 2009, even though they may not look their age. Popeye is 80. Scooby-Doo is 40. "The Simpsons" is 20. And that's not the half of it. Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner are 60. Rocky and Bullwinkle are 50...
Scooby, Felix, other cartoon icons celebrated milestone birthdays in 2009 | detnews.com | The Detroit News
Dagnabbit, that makes me feel older than dirt, and that's a fact!
BadtotheboneBob
Thanks, B2tbBob!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
While things don't look as gloomy as they did a week ago, there's still a ways to go.
I appreciate the help you've sent, but as it currently stands, the last page will still be Monday (01/04/10).
At the same time, I've been deeply touched by the notes of encouragement, and blown away by the generosity of some readers.
I won't give up hope that things may still work out.
OTOH, I am all too familiar with reality.
Please help save the e-page!
Oops, She Did It Again
Kathy Griffin
For the second straight year, comedian Kathy Griffin ushered in the new year by saying something vulgar on CNN.
During the network's live New Year's Eve broadcast from Times Square, Griffin was joking with co-host Anderson Cooper about how to pronounce the first name of "balloon boy" Falcon Heene when she mumbled something that sounded a little like "Falcon" and a lot like the F-word.
During the same show a year ago, Griffin gleefully shouted at a heckler in the crowd and made a joke implying that the man performed gay sex acts for a living.
In a statement released by her publicist Friday, Griffin made light of the "balloon boy" joke: "Like every other serious reporter covering the now infamous balloon boy hoax, I struggled to pronounce his name 'Falcon' correctly and have gotten a kick out of how many ways I've heard it pronounced by other serious reporters. Just add me to that list and happy new year!"
Kathy Griffin
2009's Top Box Office Star
Sandra Bullock
In the eyes of U.S. movie theater owners, Sandra Bullock shined as 2009's top Hollywood star at the box office, as the actress nicknamed "America's Sweetheart" scored with audiences after a two-year absence from screens.
Quigley Publishing Company's annual list released on Thursday of top money making stars, based on a poll of hundreds of theater executives, had Bullock beat out such stars as George Clooney and Denzel Washington, on the strength of her roles in "The Proposal" and "The Blind Side."
Bullock, who also starred in the 2009 comedy "All About Steve" with its $34 million take in the U.S. and Canada, is the eighth woman to top Quigley's list of top money making stars, which the company has put out each year since 1932.
"Public Enemies" star Johnny Depp came in at No. 2 on Quigley's top 10 list, followed by Matt Damon, George Clooney, Robert Downey Jr, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf and Denzel Washington.
Sandra Bullock
Poland Launches Bicentenary Celebrations
Frederic Chopin
Poland launched a year of celebrations Friday to mark the 200th anniversary of the celebrated composer Frederic Chopin, which will include events both at home and abroad.
Culture Minister Bogdan Zdrojewski officially launched Chopin Year at the house where Chopin was born, in Zelazowa Wola, 80 kilometres (50 miles) west of the capital Warsaw.
Later Friday, the Warsaw Philharmonic was set to give its first concert as part of the year's events, and on Thursday the Chinese pianist Lang Lan will play some of the composer's most celebrated pieces at a concert in Warsaw.
Chopin Year will include around 2,000 separate events, from concerts and exhibitions to films and theatrical performances -- with only 1,200 of them taking place in Poland itself.
Frederic Chopin
Hypocrite Hypochondriac
Pigboy
Conservative talk radio show host Republican spokesmodel and Oxycontin-fan Rush Limbaugh says tests show nothing wrong after chest pains hospitalized him.
Limbaugh said Friday at a Honolulu news conference that he was being released from the hospital, where he'd been since Wednesday. Doctors said he did not have a heart attack or heart disease. Limbaugh says they don't know what caused the chest pains.
Asked whether he was taking painkillers, Limbaugh said no.
Pigboy
Songwriter Settles Lawsuit
Joseph Brooks
The Academy Award-winning songwriter of "You Light Up My Life" has ended his six-figure fight with a former fiancee he accused of conning him out of cash and pricey gifts by hiding the fact that she was already married.
A Manhattan judge last week approved a settlement between composer Joseph Brooks and Joaly Gomez, who said Brooks knew she wasn't single.
The settlement terms weren't specified, but court records show Brooks previously agreed Gomez could keep most of a disputed $550,000 unless they struck a deal to share it.
Brooks, 71, sued his 23-year-old ex-fiancee in October, seeking at least $2 million in damages and the return of the money, a $60,000 engagement ring, a $70,000 Mercedes-Benz and other presents. Gomez was a "young schemer" who "tried to sucker a 'sugar daddy,'" Brooks' lawyer, William Rome, said in court papers.
Joseph Brooks
Rupert Blinked
Time Warner Cable
The Fox television network and Time Warner Cable on Friday announced an agreement in principle on a television programming deal that allows signals to continue for millions of cable subscribers.
Fox had threatened to force Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks to drop the Fox broadcast signal from 14 of its TV stations and half a dozen of its cable channels as a contract expired at midnight Thursday.
But signals were extended into Friday as talks continued, allowing more than 6 million cable subscribers in New York, Los Angeles, Orlando, Fla., and other markets to watch college football bowl games and other programming.
The statement did not give details on the agreement. Fox has said it wants to be paid $1 per cable subscriber each month for the broadcast signal it now gives away freely from the stations it owns. Other Fox affiliate stations that are owned by different companies have already cut deals to be paid by cable operators for a fraction of that fee.
Time Warner Cable
Second Pirate Pleads Guilty
"Love Guru"
A second person has agreed to plead guilty in the case involving a copy of the Mike Myers bomb "The Love Guru" leaking on the Internet a day before its theatrical release.
The whole affair could serve as a cautionary tale to folks who abuse their access to unreleased films, even when their motivation might be as innocuous as to, say, be the life of a party.
Mischa Wynhausen, 31, of Irvine, Calif., is set to make his felony plea in the next couple of months, and it's agreed he'll serve three years' probation for the crime of uploading the Paramount Pictures movie to the Internet.
Wynhausen got the copy through family members of Jack Yates, a 28-year-old employee at Los Angeles Duplication & Broadcasting. Paramount had engaged that company to make clips that were to air on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," but Yates decided to take an extra copy himself for screening at a family gathering.
"Love Guru"
Solar Showdown
Tortoises
On a strip of California's Mojave Desert, two dozen rare tortoises could stand in the way of a sprawling solar-energy complex in a case that highlights mounting tensions between wilderness conservation and the nation's quest for cleaner power.
Oakland, Calif.-based BrightSource Energy has been pushing for more than two years for permission to erect 400,000 mirrors on the site to gather the sun's energy. It could become the first project of its kind on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property, leaving a footprint for others to follow on vast stretches of public land across the West.
The construction would come with a cost: Government scientists have concluded that more than 6 square miles of habitat for the federally threatened desert tortoise would be permanently lost.
The Sierra Club and other environmentalists want the complex relocated to preserve what they call a near-pristine home for rare plants and wildlife, including the protected tortoise, the Western burrowing owl and bighorn sheep.
The dispute is likely to echo for years as more companies seek to develop solar, wind and geothermal plants on land treasured by environmentalists who also support the growth of alternative energy. In an area of stark beauty, the question will be what is worth preserving and at what cost as California pushes to generate one-third of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.
Tortoises
Lake Superior State University
Banned Word List
If you recently tweeted about how you were chillaxin for the holiday, take note: Fifteen particularly over- or mis-used words and phrases have been declared "shovel-ready" to be "unfriended" by a U.S. university's annual list of terms that deserve to be banned.
After thousands of nominations of words and phrases commonly used in marketing, media, technology and elsewhere, wordsmiths at Lake Superior State University on Thursday issued their 35th annual list of words that they believe should be banned.
Tops on the Michigan university's list of useless phrases was "shovel-ready." The term refers to infrastructure projects that are ready to break ground and was popularly used to describe road, bridge and other construction projects fueled by stimulus funds from the Obama administration.
And speaking of stimulus, that word -- which was applied to government spending aimed at boosting the economy -- made the over-used category as well, along with an odd assortment of Obama-related constructions such as Obamacare and Obamanomics.
Banned Word List
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