Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Eating the Irish (New York Times)
That "bailout" for Ireland mostly seems to be about the government imposing even more pain on its people, in exchange for a credit line. It's not a workable strategy.
Jim Hightower: THE IMMORALITY OF "AMERICA AT WAR"
Are you aware that America has now been at war for nearly a decade? We've been fighting, bleeding, and dying in two hellacious, multitrillion-dollar conflagrations since 2001 - and our blood continues to flow, with no end in sight.
Clarence Page: Giving marriage a regal aura (Chicago Tribune)
It's hard to figure us Yanks out, my British friends say. We still go simply ga-ga over royal weddings like the upcoming nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Yet we historically rejected royalty - and increasingly we're even rejecting marriage.
Lenore Skenazy: Turkey and Stuffing vs. Sawdust and Glue (Creators Syndicate)
If you're sitting around still digesting Thanksgiving dinner, there's a way to feel even more grateful for that extra helping of pie or gravy. (Yes, for some of us, gravy is an actual food group.) Just pick up a copy of "City of Thieves," by David Benioff.
Richard Roeper: Sheen's $3,500 date doomed from the start (Chicago Sun-Times)
Paying that much for companion was just the start of the lunacy.
"The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys" by Lilian Pizzichini: A review by Lauren Elkin
The biography of Jean Rhys which has just been published by W.W. Norton is not a biography. It is a biopic in narrative form.
Philip Oltermann: "Hans Keilson interview: 'Genius? I'm not even a proper writer!'" (The Guardian)
Hans Keilson may be the greatest novelist you've never heard of. Born a German Jew in 1909, he wrote his first book aged 23. Now, a mere 77 years later, he's set to become a literary sensation for his depiction of hiding from the Nazis.
Act One
Stephen Sondheim's 'Finishing the Hat' is an emotionally layered, searchingly intelligent musical memoir, with lyrics and commentary. Adam Hanft reviews.
Tropicalia's Great Eccentric
Robert Christgau on why the world needs to know about-- and listen to -- Brazil's mad musical genius, Tom Zé.
"'A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers' By WILL FRIEDWALD": Reviewed by Tom Santopietro
Will Friedwald is one opinionated fellow. His 811-page Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers, ten years in the making, celebrates both the famous and obscure pop singers of the past century, and every last one of its essays is filled with passion, high praise, and occasionally, vitriol. The end result is a highly personal guide likely to entertain, educate, and occasionally infuriate-exactly the attributes one wants in a pop culture encyclopedia.
Rosanna Greenstreet: "Q&A: Jackie Chan" (The Guardian)
'Michael Jackson called me once. I didn't get to speak to him'
Dawn C. Chmielewski and Claudia Eller: Disney Animation is closing the book on fairy tales (Los Angeles Times)
'Tangled' will be the last such movie it makes for the foreseeable future. The studio is aiming for wider appeal.
David Bruce has 39 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $39 you can buy 9,750 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," and "Maximum Cool."
The Weekly Poll
Current Question
And now, in keeping with the Holiday Season theme, I submit fer yer approval...
The 'Scope or Grope' Edition
"Resistance is Futile"
If you don't want to pass through an airport scanner that allows security agents to see an image of your naked body or to undergo the alternative, a thorough manual search, you may have to find another way to travel this holiday season. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is warning that any would-be commercial airline passenger who enters an airport checkpoint and then refuses to undergo the method of inspection designated by TSA will not be allowed to fly and also will not be permitted to simply leave the airport. That person will have to remain on the premises to be questioned by the TSA and possibly by local law enforcement. Anyone refusing faces fines up to $11,000 and possible arrest... $11,000 fine, arrest possible for some who refuse airport scans and pat downs - South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
If you were (or are) planning to travel this Holiday Season, what's it gonna be?
1.) Scope
2.) Grope
3.) Car, train, bus...
4.) I'm stayin' home, Dagnabbit!
Send your response to
wrote:
answered:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Reader Suggestions
Michelle in AZ
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still sunny, still brisk (for these parts).
Super Bowl Halftime
Black Eyed Peas
The Black Eyed Peas will perform during the halftime break at the Super Bowl on February 6 next year, the U.S. band announced on its website.
The performance during the climax of the American football season has become one of the most-watched musical events of the year, with over 153 million U.S. viewers tuning in last time around, according to the group.
The Grammy award-winning quartet joins recent halftime acts including The Who, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Prince, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and U2.
The Super Bowl will take place at the Dallas Cowboys' new stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Black Eyed Peas
Topic Of Class At Johns Hopkins
'The Wire'
The former HBO series "The Wire" is the topic of a new class at Johns Hopkins University, in the city where the drama was based.
The class was introduced this semester and uses the Baltimore show as a way to look at the problems big cities in America face. Guest speakers have included former Baltimore commissioner Ed Norris, an actor on the show, and show creator David Simon.
The class was taught by Peter Beilenson (BEE'-lihn-suhn), an adjunct professor, and uses the 60 episodes of the show as a textbook. The series ran from 2002 to 2008.
For their midterm assignment, students visited and wrote about needle-exchange sites and juvenile justice centers. And for their final assignments students will write memos suggesting fixes to city problems.
'The Wire'
Charged In Texas
Willie Nelson
A U.S. Border Patrol spokesman says country singer Willie Nelson was charged with marijuana possession after 6 ounces was found aboard his tour bus in Texas.
Patrol spokesman Bill Brooks says the bus pulled into the Sierra Blanca, Texas, checkpoint about 9 a.m. Friday. Brooks says an officer smelled pot when a door was opened and a search turned up marijuana.
Brooks says the Hudspeth County sheriff was contacted and Nelson was among three people arrested.
Sheriff Arvin West didn't immediately return a phone message left at his home Friday, but he told the El Paso Times that Nelson claimed the marijuana was his. The singer was held briefly a $2,500 bond before being released.
Willie Nelson
Letters To Auction
Russian Royal Family
Some 2,000 letters, postcards and photographs sent by the last Russian czar's siblings to their private tutor will go under the hammer in Geneva next month.
The correspondence from Czar Nicholas II's younger brothers George and Mikhail and their sisters Xenia and Olga to their Swiss tutor Ferdinand Thormeyer has never before been published, Swiss auction company Hotel des Ventes said Friday.
Chief auctioneer Bernard Piguet said the letters were "really intimate documents" covering the period from 1881 to 1959. The correspondence reveals details about life within the Romanov Imperial family and gives an insight into the siblings' childhood, journeys and life in exile.
Little has been written about Thormeyer, who traveled to Russia age 18 in 1876 and began teaching French and literature to the Romanov children ten years later.
He taught the future czar, Nicholas, for three years and later tutored the younger siblings until 1899.
Russian Royal Family
Next Release
WikiLeaks
U.S. allies around the world have been briefed by American diplomats about an expected release of classified U.S. files by the WikiLeaks website that is likely to cause international embarrassment and could damage some nations' relations with the United States.
The release of hundreds of thousands of State Department cables is expected this weekend, although WikiLeaks has not been specific about the timing. The cables are thought to include private, candid assessments of foreign leaders and governments and could erode trust in the U.S. as a diplomatic partner.
I
n Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron's spokesman, Steve Field, said Friday that the government had been told of "the likely content of these leaks" by U.S. Ambassador Louis Susman. Field declined to say what Britain had been warned to expect.
In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said U.S. diplomats were continuing the process of warning governments around the world about what might be in the documents. Many fear the cables will embarrass the United States and its allies, and reveal sensitive details of how the U.S. conducts relations with other countries.
WikiLeaks
Shifts To Satellite
"Dr." Laura
Talk show host Laura $chlessinger (R-Racist Harpy) won't stay away from radio very long - only a weekend, in fact.
Sirius XM Radio said Monday it has a multiyear deal with $chlessinger to bring her "Dr. Laura" advice program to satellite radio in January. Specific terms were not revealed.
$chlessinger had said in August she was quitting her syndicated radio program, a week after she apologized for using the N-word on the air 11 times while talking to a black woman, and activists demanded her ouster.
She ends her traditional radio program on Friday, Dec. 31. The following Monday, she starts at Sirius.
"Dr." Laura
Convictions Upheld
Pirate Bay
A Swedish appeals court on Friday upheld the copyright convictions of three men behind The Pirate Bay, a popular file-sharing site that remains in operation despite attempts by authorities to shut it down.
The Svea Appeals Court agreed with a lower court ruling that found Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstrom guilty of helping users of the site to break Sweden's copyright law.
However, the appeals court reduced their prison sentences from one year each to between four and 10 months and raised the amount they have to pay in damages to the entertainment industry to 46 million kronor ($6.5 million).
The lower court had set damages at 32 million kronor ($4.5 million).
Pirate Bay
Killed 'Demon'
Michael Brea
An actor accused of hacking his mother to death with a sword felt like the character Neo from the movie "The Matrix" - "hearing voices and feeling powerful" - before the attack, he said in a newspaper interview published Friday.
"I didn't kill her. I killed the demon inside her," Michael Brea, 31, told the Daily News from a hospital prison ward where he was being held after his arrest on murder and other charges.
"I just kept cutting her. No one could stop me. I was doing the work of God," he told the paper.
"I felt like Neo from 'The Matrix.' I began hearing voices and feeling powerful. ... It was a sign," Brea said.
Michael Brea
Abba Star Loses Case
Anni-Frid Reuss
Former Abba star Anni-Frid Reuss has lost a lawsuit aimed at pushing a Quigong resort specialising in Chinese medicine and meditation into bankruptcy to recoup a multi-million dollar loan, a lawyer said Friday.
The Malmoe district court on Thursday ruled against Reuss and her companion Henry Smith. They had asked that the Yangtorp Qigong resort be liquidated to allow them to recover a loan of 46 million kronor (4.9 million euros, 7 million dollars).
The Yangtorp resort, which comprises a hotel and temple, meanwhile insisted the money was a donation from Reuss, better known as Frida to Abba fans.
The court ordered Reuss and Smith to pay the legal costs in the case, amounting to 65,575 kronor.
Anni-Frid Reuss
Stalin Ordered
Katyn Massacre
The World War II Katyn massacres were committed on the direct order of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Russia's lower house of parliament said Friday - a statement hailed by Polish officials.
The 1940 massacre of around 20,000 Polish officers and other prominent citizens in western Russia by Soviet secret police has long soured relations between the two countries. President Dmitry Medvedev will visit Poland in early December.
Soviet propaganda for decades blamed the killings on the Nazis, but post-Soviet Russia previously acknowledged they were carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, or NKVD - Stalin's much feared secret police.
The statement passed by the State Duma appears aimed as a step toward Russia definitively breaking with its Soviet legacy.
Some observers have expressed alarm in recent years that Russia may be quietly rehabilitating Stalin. Last year, a quote praising Stalin was restored to the decoration of one of Moscow's busiest subway stations; this year, Moscow's mayor proposed allowing posters depicting Stalin as part of the annual celebrations of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Katyn Massacre
Sues Mars
Hershey
Bitter rivals in the candy aisle may also duke it out in court.
The Hershey Co. sued Mars Inc. this week in federal district court, with the maker of Hershey's and Reese's chocolate candies accusing the maker of Snickers, M&Ms and Dove candies of mimicking some of its packaging.
Hershey is claiming trademark dilution and infringement, and unfair competition.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in Harrisburg, contends that Mars' packaging of its Dove peanut butter chocolate Promise squares is trying to piggyback on the patented orange, brown and tan wrappings of the Reese's peanut butter chocolate products that Hershey has marketed for decades.
Hershey
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