Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: The Market Mystique (nytimes.com)
The top officials in the Obama administration still believe in the magic of the financial marketplace and in the prowess of the wizards who perform that magic.
Mark Morford: When chaos calls (sfgate.com)
Bedlam abounds. Is now a good time to unplug and move to the woods?
KAREN HAWKINS: More women needing cash go from jobless to topless (Associated Press)
As a bartender and trainer at a national restaurant chain, Rebecca Brown earned a couple thousand dollars in a really good week. Now, as a dancer at Chicago's Pink Monkey gentleman's club, she makes almost that much in one good night. The tough job market is prompting a growing number of women across the country to dance in strip clubs, appear in adult movies or pose for magazines like "Hustler."
JOEL STEIN: Sure, give to charity. Just don't expect a kickback (latimes.com)
President Obama wants to lower the tax deduction for charitable giving. Why stop there?
Garrison Keillor: Spring reminds that we'd rather be artists
Spring is a time when we are one nation. In a few weeks, the South will head toward its air-conditioned caves and a cold summer chill will fall on San Francisco, but in spring and fall, we are one people, more unum than pluribus, stepping gracefully to the music of photosynthesis, and not even a sour economy can change that, so Viva sweet spring. I say this as the father of a sandy-haired gap-toothed daughter who jumps up from breakfast to dance the shimmy. With so much pre-adolescence going on around you, it's hard to be glum.
TOM DANEHY: If Tom listened to music while working out, would the Knee Destroyer get jealous? (tucsonweekly.com)
I was working out one day at the greatest exercise facility of all time (product placement here). The place has all kinds of new and fancy equipment, but my friend Todd, who owns the joint, has kept a couple of old-school stair-climbers off to the side. I can go in any time of day or night and almost guarantee that they'll be unoccupied.
"Dusty!: Queen of the Postmods" by Annie J. Randall: A review by David Thomson
An Oxford University Press book, no less! I opened it up, and this is what I read: "Though much of the book concerns discourses, especially those revolving around Dusty's pastiche and identity disruption, its discussions carry a significant caveat concerning the evacuation of meaning and 'waning of affect' that, according to Fredric Jameson, characterize postmodern cultural products. Audience perceptions of depth and feeling in Dusty's performance call into question Jameson's fleeting 'intensities' while her work's artful surfaces, unhooked from 'natural' moorings, point to new rather than absent content." Really, that is what it said.
20 Questions: Cobra Verde (popmatters.com)
Q: The best piece of advice you actually followed?
A: Diplomacy is letting other people have your way. Or, Why keep up with the Joneses when you can bring them down to your level?
Ariston Anderson: Q&A with Swedish Pop Trio Peter, Bjorn & John (huffingtonpost.com)
We spoke to the band to find out just what's behind the new album, why they love Iggy Pop trivia, how Kanye discovered them, and why uptempo slow songs are the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Greg Kot: Jill Sobule records her latest album with a lot of help from fans (Chicago Tribune)
Veteran singer-songwriter Jill Sobule got fed up with business as usual three years ago, and on a new song she pinpoints the moment. "I'm here at a meeting," she sings in a voice perched between exasperation and resignation. "Trying to impress someone at a dying record company."
Jim Gaffigan, Star of "King Baby" and "My Boys" (bullz-eye.com)
The influence of Hot Pockets, the consumption of them, has so helped people's awareness of me. But then there is kind of the other side, where it's, like, "Do I need more people in the airport yelling 'Hot Pockets' at me?
'I found my spot' (guardian.co.uk)
She's the cool, klutzy indie film actor. But, at 50, isn't it time Catherine Keener started playing leads, asks John Patterson.
The Weekly Poll
The next Poll will be April 7th - BadToTheBoneBob's 'out state' on vacation.
Of the 148 episodes comprising the original 'Twilight Zone', how many were written by or adapted from other works by Rod Serling?
wrote:
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny with a nice breeze.
40th Anniversary
Monty Python
The Monty Python team is re-uniting in a documentary to mark the 40th anniversary of the first broadcast of the show.
Monty Python: Almost The Truth (The Lawyer's Cut) will see the Pythons tell their life stories.
The documentary will feature interviews with all of the surviving Python members, along with archive footage of Chapman, who died in 1989.
The programme will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray in October, 40 years after Monty Python's Flying Circus was broadcast on the BBC in October 1969.
Monty Python
Seks To Save The SS United States
Walter Cronkite
Former CBS news anchorman Walter Cronkite is trying to help preserve a historic cruise ship that is rusting away on Philadelphia's waterfront.
The SS United States is the largest and fastest ocean liner ever built in the U.S. She hasn't sailed since 1969 and is now tied up at a Philadelphia pier.
A group called the SS United States Conservancy is trying to preserve the 990-foot ship. Cronkite is the new honorary chairman of the conservancy's advisory council.
Norwegian Cruise Lines purchased the ship several years ago and planned to return it to service. But the company put it up for sale in January.
Walter Cronkite
Makes A Point
Sir Ian McKellen
Sir Ian McKellen is furious his nude scene was cut from a TV broadcast of 'King Lear' because he is too old. Skip related content
The 69-year-old acting legend was stunned by the Public Broadcasting Service's decision to remove his manhood-baring monologue from the TV production of the Shakespearean play when it aired in America on Wednesday night (25.03.09).
He said: "The channel has its rules. It's all right to see someone have their eyes gouged out, but it's not right to see an old man with his trousers down."
Ian played the tragic king on stage for 18 months, touring the world with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Sir Ian McKellen
Abel Prize
Mikhail Gromov
Soviet-born mathematician Mikhail Gromov won Norway's prestigious, 923,000-dollar Abel Prize for his "revolutionary contributions to geometry," the prize committee said.
Gromov, a French citizen, celebrated his victory by sipping champagne with colleagues and students at New York University (NYU), where he teaches.
Attending the celebration in cheap shoes, well-worn trousers and a plain shirt, he described his approach to mathematics as "vague and precise at the same time."
The 65-year-old also teaches at France's Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies (IHES) near Paris and is the third French mathematician to win the top award since it was created six years ago.
Mikhail Gromov
Diagram Prize
'Fromage Frais'
A heavyweight study of the future of soft cheese has won Britain's annual competition to find the year's oddest book title.
"The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais," by Philip M. Parker won the Diagram Prize, awarded Friday by trade magazine The Bookseller.
The runner-up was primate study "Baboon Metaphysics," by Dorothy L. Cheney and Robert M. Seyfarth.
The Diagram Prize was founded in 1978, and the winner is decided by public vote.
'Fromage Frais'
NBC Yanks
"Chopping Block"
NBC is pulling cooking competition series "Chopping Block" from primetime after three weeks on the air, sources said.
The network informed affiliates Thursday night that the reality series starring renowned chef Marco Pierre White will no longer air Wednesday nights, as of next week.
"Block" will be replaced with repeats of "Law & Order: Criminal Intent." The "CI" episodes are repeats of episodes that have previously aired on NBC; the episodes that aired only on USA Network will still make their broadcast debut on NBC starting April 29, as originally announced.
"Chopping Block"
Adopting Malawian Girl
Madonna
An official and another person close to the case say that Madonna is to adopt a Malawian girl, offering more detail on the second child the star hopes to adopt from the impoverished African country.
The girl, who is about 4, is the child of an unmarried teenage mother who died a month after she was born. Her father is alive.
The girl had been cared for by her uncle and grandmother but has more recently been staying at a children's center run by Madonna's charity Raising Malawi.
The girl's relatives at first resisted the adoption but have now consented, people close to the case say.
Madonna
Bilked By Half Brother
Dane Cook
The half brother of Dane Cook has been ordered held on $1 million bail on charges alleging he stole millions of dollars from the comedian.
Darryl McCauley pleaded not guilty to eight counts of larceny over $250, forgery and larceny by continuous scheme. Prosecutors said at Thursday's arraignment in Middlesex Superior Court that more charges are expected.
Prosecutors say the 43-year-old McCauley stole the money while being paid $12,500 a month to act as business manager for Cook's company, Great Dane Enterprises.
Defense attorney Robert Goldstein said McCauley denies taking any money without his brother's consent. Goldstein, who asked for $100,000 bail, said Thursday that McCauley and Cook were "virtual partners" who together built Cook's career.
Dane Cook
26 Years
John James (J.J.) Paulsen
A television comedy writer and producer for TV shows including "Cosby" and "In Living Color" has been sentenced in Indiana to 26 years in prison in the beating death of his wife.
Forty-nine-year-old John James (J.J.) Paulsen was sentenced Friday in Hamilton Superior Court on charges of voluntary manslaughter, neglect of a dependent and moving a body from the scene of death.
Prosecutors dropped a murder charge as part of a plea agreement.
John James (J.J.) Paulsen
Online Rants Now In Court
Courtney Love
Some of Courtney Love's online rants are now in a Los Angeles court.
A fashion designer's libel and breach of contract lawsuit against the singer includes what she calls several "menacing and disturbing" statements posted on the Internet.
Austin, Texas-based Dawn Simorangkir (Sim-or-AHNG-ker), also known as Boudoir Queen, says Love never paid her for work done. She filed the lawsuit Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court.
The suit cites remarks from Love's Twitter and MySpace pages, and in the feedback section of Etsy.com. It said Love called Simorangkir a "nasty lying hosebag thief" and accused her of being a drug addict and a prostitute.
Courtney Love
Garage Sale For TV
Willie Aames
Cash-strapped former "Eight is Enough" and "Charles in Charge" star Willie Aames is selling off his belongings in suburban Kansas City.
Dozens showed up Thursday at a garage sale at his Olathe home, where Aames made deals with bargain-hunters and signed autographs.
A production crew filmed the sale for a TV show.
Items on sale included antiques, artwork, a piano, deer head mounts and TV and movie memorabilia.
Willie Aames
Giant Train Set
Miniatur Wunderland
It's billed as the world's largest model train set - a miniature world that snakes along eight miles (12 kilometers) of track, amid fields, cities, even the snowcapped Swiss Alps.
And it's quickly becoming one of Germany's biggest tourist attractions.
Twin brothers Frederick and Gerrit Braun, 41, have turned their boyhood passion for model railroads into a lucrative private museum called Miniatur Wunderland that has kept adding track since its 2001 opening and drew 1 million visitors last year.
Set on three floors in an old warehouse along the Elbe River, Miniatur Wunderland features realistic replicas of parts of Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the U.S. Figurines about a half-inch (just over one-centimeter) high represent people in all walks of life.
Miniatur Wunderland
In Memory
Dorothea Holt Redmond
Dorothea Holt Redmond, an illustrator and production designer who helped visualize several Alfred Hitchcock films and worked with Walt Disney to design a private apartment in Disneyland's New Orleans Square, has died. She was 98.
Redmond died of congestive heart failure Feb. 27 at her longtime home in the Hollywood Hills, said her daughter, Lynne Jackson.
In Hollywood, Redmond broke ground in 1938 as the first woman to invade the "heretofore exclusively male field" of motion-picture production design, at David O. Selznick's studio, The Times reported that year. Her male colleagues so resented her, they insisted that Redmond's work space be walled off from theirs, her daughter recalled.
In a film career that started with 1937's "Nothing Sacred" and spanned 20 years, Redmond contributed to seven Hitchcock films, including "Rebecca" (1940), "Rear Window" (1954) and "To Catch a Thief" (1955).
Among the more than 30 films she worked on are such classics as "Gone With the Wind" (1939), "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) and "The Ten Commandments" (1956).
In 1964, she joined what is now known as Walt Disney Imagineering and helped envision elements of Disneyland and Disney World.
Dorothea Holt was born May 18, 1910, in Los Angeles, the only child of Harry and Mary Holt. Her father co-owned Western Lithograph Co.
After studying architecture and earning a bachelor's degree in fine arts from USC in 1933, Redmond received a degree in illustration in 1936 from what is now the Art Center College of Design. She later taught at the school, her family said.
In 1940, she married Harry Redmond, a producer she met at Selznick's studio.. The couple built a house in the Hollywood Hills and finished designing it themselves when the architect died midway through the project, completed in 1948.
In addition to her daughter and husband, Redmond is survived by a son, Lee Redmond; three granddaughters; and three great-grandsons.
Dorothea Holt Redmond
In Memory
Marilyn Borden Thiel
Marilyn Borden Thiel, an actress best remembered as half of the chubby singing twins Teensy and Weensy on "I Love Lucy," has died in Modesto of congestive heart failure. She was 76.
Thiel and her late twin Rosalyn Borden Shackley also performed regularly beginning in the 1950s as the Borden Twins on the "Jimmy Durante Show" and later as Hotsy and Totsy on the nightclub circuit. Shackley died in 2003.
On "Lucy" the twins played the country daughters of a sheriff whose off-key act was as mortifying to Desi Arnaz as it was impressive to Tennessee Ernie Ford in the episode titled "Tennessee Bound."
Thiel performed in the Modesto area in recent years with her group Senior Divas. An official with Evins Funeral Home says arrangements are pending.
Marilyn Borden Thiel
In Memory
Irving R. Levine
Irving R. Levine, the bow-tied NBC newsman who explained the fine points of economics to millions of viewers for nearly a quarter century, has died. He was 86.
Known for his dry, measured delivery and trademark bow ties, Levine was a presence at NBC since 1950 when he began covering the Korean War until his retirement in 1995.
He had become the network's full-time economics correspondent in 1971 and in the last five years of his tenure also did weekly commentaries on CNBC. He also appeared on "Meet the Press" more than 100 times over the years.
After retiring from NBC, Levine joined Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., as dean of the college of international communication.
Born in Pawtucket, R.I., Levine began his career in 1940, writing obituaries for The Providence Journal. He also worked as a correspondent for the International News Service and The Times of London.
After joining NBC, he covered assignments from Korea, Moscow and Vietnam to Algeria, Poland and South Africa.
He is survived by his wife, Nancy, and their three children, Jeffrey, Daniel and Jennifer.
Irving R. Levine
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