Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Marc Dion: Lettuce Give Thanks (Creators Syndicate)
Two nights before Thanksgiving, my wife threw out a whole bag of lettuce. The morning news said some kind of greedy killing bacteria was loose in the nation's lettuce supply, that no taco was safe, no salad healthful, if it contained the killer leaf. Bang! In the trash, accompanied by a burst of filthy language from my wife, who does not like to throw things out if they cost money.
Froma Harrop: Is the Economy Headed to Crazytown? (Creators Syndicate)
"We're in crazytown," Trump's chief of staff, John Kelly, reportedly said of working with his boss. Is the economy headed there, as well? Actually, it's already arrived. "Insane" is how former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan describes Trump's various trade wars. This foolish policy is definitely behind the astounding 94 percent drop in the sale of American soybeans to China, by far the world's biggest buyer of soybeans. To make up for losses he created by destroying the farmers' best export market, Trump has launched a bailout program. It's not nearly enough to cover the farmers' losses, but it does keep the beneficiaries somewhat distracted with paperwork.
Ted Rall: Whatever Happened to the Principled Resignation? The Principled Boycott? (Creators Syndicate)
No one should work for a nutty president. Remaining associated with such a loon cannot make anything better. It cannot mitigate. It cannot save the republic. It can only lead to guilt by association. When you learn that the president of the United States is insane, there is only one moral thing to do: call a press conference, resign and tell the world everything you know.
Susan Estrich: The End of the Crime Wars (Creators Syndicate)
But if the "Willie Horton" era has finally ended, if we are finally recognizing that adding on another hundred years does nothing, the underlying connections between race and crime remain stubbornly unchanged. The crime rate has dropped, but the percentage of crime committed by young men who are uneducated drug users from single-parent families has not, and those social factors correlate all too stubbornly with race. It is certainly not racist to protect ourselves from violence. The victims of crime look very much like the perpetrators, except there are more women in the victims group.
Susan Estrich: The Year of the Woman -- Under Attack (Creators Syndicate)
The two top women in the White House (Trump and Conway) are regularly dissed as know-nothing blondes, which makes me laugh. If they're so dumb and we're so smart, how come they're the ones on that recognizable front lawn? And as for Sanders, it's worth noting that she's lasted in a job that Sean Spicer could not pull off. So, yes, it is a big year for women.
Froma Harrop: Democrats, Listen to Bustos and Keep Pelosi (Creators Syndicate)
Nancy Pelosi will probably return as speaker of the House and should. A proven master at running the legislature, she's plug-and-play ready and able to steer Democrats through these chaotic times. That Pelosi is a woman is not why she should be speaker. That she is relatively old, at 78, is not why she should not be speaker. On the dubious assumption that most voters want leaders matching their gender, age, ethnicity and race, many Democrats do their party harm by appealing to this or that identity tag in the so-called base. Here's an idea: Expand the base.
MARISSA MARTINELLI: The Princess Bride You Don't Know (Slate)
William Goldman's novel of "true love and high adventure"-the basis for his beloved screenplay-is also a thoughtful examination of his craft.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Bruce
Anecdotes
• After her first book, The Joy Luck Club, became a runaway success, author Amy Tan was asked what her mother thought of the book. Ms. Tan replied that her mother went into bookstores, looking for her book, and if she didn't see it, she scolded the bookstore employees.
• If you ever get a chance to see a mother bobcat in a zoo, look at the back of her ears. You will see white spots. The mother bobcat's kittens see the white spots, which make her more visible and help them to follow closely behind the mother bobcat when necessary.
• Microsoft founder Bill Gates' mother was a remarkable woman. Mary Gates served on the boards of several big organizations, including United Way and First Interstate Bancorp. When she was a schoolgirl, her friends called her "Giggles."
• On September 7, 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's mother died. While going through her possessions, he found a box containing some of his baby toys and some gifts that he had made for her when he was a child. He cried.
• Soprano Rita Hunter's mother was very proud of her. While Ms. Hunter was singing in Gotterdammerung, her mother turned to a friend and asked, "My God, did I really give birth to that!"
• Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Her mother, Amy, also made a first - she was the first woman to climb to the top of Pike's Peak.
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Suggestion
Nina Simone
Hi Marty,
I happened to think of this song the other day.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
DONALD J. TRUMP IS AN ACCESSORY TO MURDER!
'AMERICA'S STRAIGHTEST ARROW.'
THE INCREDIBLY STUPID PRESIDENT.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
There are a lot of ads on local TV for the Reagan Library - have had 'em for years.
But noticed last week that the commercials are now pronouncing it "REE-gun", not "RAY-gun".
One of the local stations is also giving away tickets to the library, and they're saying "REE-gun" , too.
My wasp grandparents always said "REE-gun", regardless of the pronunciation used back in the 80s. They were big fans.
See In 3D
Apollo Moon Missions
Fifty years ago, NASA launched America into the space race with the birth of the Apollo program - an 11-year initiative that sent 33 spaceflights to the moon, six of which deployed landers that visited the lunar surface.
That incredible story comes to light in a new book, "Mission Moon 3D: A New Perspective on the Space Race" (The MIT Press, 2018), offering a fresh view of the decades-long challenge that galvanized space agencies in the U.S. and the former Soviet Union and brought the first people to the moon.
And it does so with a unique and extensive collection of archival photos featuring astronauts, cosmonauts, spacecraft and moon landscapes, presented in stereo pairs so the images can be viewed in 3D.
Written by David Eicher, editor of Astronomy Magazine, the book brings together numerous astronauts' recollections for the first time. And, intriguingly, the book includes tales from Soviet cosmonauts - many of which were not previously available for much of the past 50 years, Eicher told Live Science.
NASA astronauts were trained to take stereo photographs while in space, and the Apollo missions' photo archives were brimming with 3D photos, Eicher said. Image selection for the book was organized and overseen by astrophysicist and Queen guitarist Brian May, who has long been an aficionado of stereoscopy. For decades, May collected vintage stereoscopic cards and captured his own stereo photos, and since 2006 he has served as the director of the London Stereoscopic Co., which provides information and resources for fans of modern and historical stereo photography.
Apollo Moon Missions
Unveils Unopened Sarcophagus
Egypt
Egyptian authorities on Saturday unveiled a well-preserved mummy of a woman inside a previously unopened coffin in Luxor in southern Egypt dating back to more than 3,000 years.
The sarcophagus, an ancient coffin, was one of two found earlier this month by a French-led mission in the northern area of El-Asasef, a necropolis on the western bank of the Nile. The first one had been opened earlier and examined by Egyptian antiquities officials.
"One sarcophagus was rishi-style, which dates back to the 17th dynasty, while the other sarcophagus was from the 18th dynasty," Minister of Antiquities Khaled Al Anani said. "The two tombs were present with their mummies inside."
The Eighteenth Dynasty dates back to the 13th century BC, a period noted for some of the most well known Pharaohs, including Tutankhamen and Ramses II.
It was the first known time that authorities had opened a previously unopened sarcophagus before international media.
Egypt
At 30
'Mystery Science Theater 3000'
In the not too distant past - November 24th, 1988, A.D. - a moderately successful stand-up comedian named Joel Hodgson slipped on a jumpsuit. He then spent a few hours on a Minneapolis UHF station making fun of the terrible movies Invaders from the Deep and Revenge of the Mysterions from Mars, alongside a couple of handmade robot puppets. Only a handful of lucky Minnesotans were watching KTMA that Thanksgiving night, exactly 30 years ago. They all saw the birth of a pop culture phenomenon: a charmingly cheap-looking show that, no joke, changed television.
In the three decades since Mystery Science Theater 3000 debuted, its popularity has waxed and waned. It's been an underground sensation, passed around from fan to fan via old VHS tapes. For a time it was a TV tentpole, filling up hours of airtime every day on the fledgling version of Comedy Central. And then it spent about 15 years as a lost classic, exiled from the small screen, while its former writers and actors scattered into rival bands of riffers - sometimes as snippy towards each other in interviews as the cast of Teen-Age Crime Wave.
Right now, however, the state of the franchise is as strong as it's ever been. Netflix just this past Thursday launched the second season of its revamped MST3K - still overseen by Hodgson, but now with Jonah Ray hosting, and Hampton Yount and Baron Vaughn voicing the wisecracking sidekicks Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo. The home entertainment company Shout! Factory is still keeping as many of the show's old episodes in circulation as possible and just ran a pre-Thanksgiving marathon of fan-favorites. Dark Horse is publishing an MST miniseries, where Hodgson and his friends riff on public domain comic books. The cast is doing regular live tours, drawing fervent crowds. Life is good on the Satellite of Love.
And what's more important is that the recent revival has been fresh enough to win new fans, while holding onto what made the original show special. Because here's the thing about Mystery Science Theater 3000: It's always had such a simple DIY feel that it looks like something anyone could do. But if you suffered through the dozens of bad MST3Kripoffs that sprang up in the 1990s, you know: It ain't easy to make bad movies look good.
'Mystery Science Theater 3000'
'Shrek' Writer
Terry Rossio
Hollywood screenwriter Terry Rossio faced online backlash Friday after he used a racial slur in a tweet railing against vaccines, reportedmultiplemediaoutlets.
Rossio, 58, sparked anger after he claimed that calling someone who was against vaccinations "Anti-Vax" was the "equivalent to calling someone" the N-word. He also spelled out the highly offensive slur in his tweet.
It "makes as little sense," added Rossio, whose writing credits include box office hits "Shrek," "Aladdin" and the "Pirates Of The Caribbean" franchise.
Rossio's comment was in response to a thread initially started by Erik Burnham, who said anti-vaxxers "made me grind my teeth," per BuzzFeed News. Burnham has since deleted his message. Rossio's post followed one from "The 100" writer Julie Benson, which called on people to donate money to UNICEF's polio vaccination program in the name of their anti-vaxxer relatives.
Rossio's response drew immediate ire from fellow tweeters, who called him out for using the racial slur and promoting the widely debunked conspiracy theory that childhood vaccines can cause autism. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states on its website that there is "no link between vaccines and autism."
Terry Rossio
Don't Mean Global Warming Isn't Happening
Cold Winters
We all have that one friend who uses localised weather, particularly cold snaps, as evidence climate change isn't happening. This week, that friend was President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Grabby Grifter).
He took to Twitter to ask "whatever happened to global warming?" in reference to the record cold Thanksgiving parts of the US are expected to experience.
In Trump's defence, it's an easy and very common mistake to make in science, taking a short patch of weather in a localised region and using it to make broad statements about the long-term climate patterns of the planet as a whole. It seems intuitive that if the planet is getting warmer, winters should get warmer too.
But this idea actually has no scientific backing, and it's a dangerous error that can detract and distract from the real science on climate change.
In fact, studies actually show that the opposite is true.
Cold Winters
Stepped In It
Dolce & Gabbana
Dolce & Gabbana has issued an apology for offending the Chinese people.
The major fashion brand released a video of the designers Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce on social media channels Friday, Nov. 23. In the video, Gabbana and Dolce take turns expressing their regret for insulting the country.
Gabbana promises that he and Dolce will work to do things better in the future. "We will respect the Chinese culture in every way possible," he says before asking for forgiveness "from the bottom of our hearts."
Then they both say "Sorry" in Mandarin.
The apology comes a few days after the brand launched ads in China that rubbed people the wrong way. There were videos featuring a Chinese woman struggling to eat pizza and other Italian foods with chopsticks and images showing Asian people eating pasta with their hands while others were using utensils.
Dolce & Gabbana
Freeze To Death
Sea Turtles
A group of migrating sea turtles were reportedly caught in a "freak" weather system off the coast of Cape Cod, leading to 190 of the marine animals freezing to death.
As NBC News reported, the massive number of deaths were discovered on Friday and announced by the Mass Audubon Wildlife Sanctuary, which said that the turtles were caught up in a "once-in-a-lifetime" combination of freezing temperatures, gale force winds, and high tide. The freakish weather conditions made it impossible for the turtles to escape, experts said.
A report from AccuWeather noted that Cape Cod was hit with a spell of unusually cold weather, including back to back nights of single-digit temperatures. The first group of 82 turtles washed up on beaches on Wednesday but were not dead, the report noted, though ones found later in the week were not so lucky.
Because sea turtles are cold blooded, they become stunned when there are sharp drops in temperature, AccuWeather noted. This happens when water temperatures drop below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, leaving the turtles to become immobilized and causing them to float to the surface. There, they are subject to freezing winds and ice chunks. When these turtles wash ashore, survival becomes almost impossible, the report noted.
The Mass Audubon Wildlife Sanctuary noted that it has now found close to 400 dead turtles this season off the Massachusetts coast, and blamed changing migration patterns. Researchers said sea turtles once arrived in Cape Cod near October, but rising ocean temperatures pushed the arrival back to November, when they are at greater risk of running into volatile weather systems.
Sea Turtles
Hidden Game Room
Word of Life Church
Firefighters called to reports of a fire inside a house of worship in north Harris County uncovered instead more than 100 gambling machines.
Crews were called to the 800 block of Turney Drive at around 7:30 p.m. Friday for a reported fire at the Word of Life Church.
Firefighters arrived to find no signs of fire. However, the person who reported the incident said he was locked in by an electronic door lock.
Crews made their way into the church, where they revealed a large gaming room.
Pastor Anthony Scott told ABC13 the church shares the building with another business. One side of the building is the Word of Life Church, and the other side is its own separate entity.
Word of Life Church
Flattened By Asteroid?
Sodom
A cataclysmic disaster of biblical proportions may have wiped out the ancient "city of sin" mentioned in the Christian Bible.
Located in modern-day Jordan Valley, in the Book of Genesis, it follows that the two notoriously sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by "sulfur and fire" because of their wickedness. Now, a team of researchers with more than a decade of archaeological excavation work in the Holy Land say there may be some truth to the biblical story after all. Presenting their work at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, they say an airburst caused by a meteor explosion in the atmosphere instantly obliterated a civilization encompassing a 25-kilometer-wide (15.5 miles) region.
"We're unearthing the largest Bronze Age site in the region, likely the site of biblical Sodom itself," says the excavation team on its website.
Analyses of Tall el-Hamman, located just northeast of the Dead Sea, suggest the area was occupied continuously for 2,500 years before suddenly collapsing at the end of the Bronze Age. Radiocarbon dating shows mud-brick walls of almost every structure disappeared 3,700 years ago, leaving behind just their stone foundations. Outer layers of pottery also show signs of melting - Zircon crystals found in the coating would have been formed within 1 second at high temperatures possibly as hot as the surface of the Sun. If that isn't apocalyptic enough for you, then picture the high-force winds responsible for creating tiny mineral grains raining down through the sky, which were also found on pottery throughout the site.
It gets worse. The "high heat explosion" not only wiped out "100 percent of the Middle Bronze Age cities and towns," but also stripped agricultural soils from once-fertile fields as brine from the Dead Sea salts pushed over the land, rendering it useless for an estimated six centuries.
Sodom
In Memory
Dr. Olivia Hooker
The United States Coast Guard has announced the death of Dr. Olivia Hooker at the age of 103.
Dr. Hooker was the first African American woman to enlist in the Coast Guard in 1945.
Born in 1915 in Muskogee, Okla., Hooker was a survivor of the infamous Tulsa Race Riots in 1921, when the Ku Klux Klan burned her father's clothing store. Her family survived the riots, but they departed Oklahoma when her father desired to live in a community where his children could live without fear of violence while getting an education.
They moved to Topeka, Kan., and later Columbus, Ohio. Hooker graduated from high school in Columbus in 1937. She earned a bachelor's degree in education at Ohio State University. She went on to teach third grade in Columbus for the next eight years.
By the mid-40s, after President Franklin Roosevelt opened female military corps to all minority groups and not just whites. African American women began to enlist in the military. Encouraged by a friend, author and Coast Guardsman Alex Haley, Hooker joined the military.
According to a Coast Guard biography of Hooker, she was accepted into the Coast Guard SPARs in 1945.
"It was not easy for Miss Hooker to take the step of enlistment. She is the first Negro woman to be accepted by the SPARs, and is in full realization of this fact. She feels a sincere desire to serve and further feels that she is opening a field for the young women of her own race," said Lt. Margaret Tighe, a recruiter at the Columbus station.
After completing boot camp and training, she worked at the Coast Guard Personnel Separation Center in Boston helping Coast Guardsmen returning from the war to rejoin civilian life. By the middle of 1946, the SPARs were disbanded, and Hooker was able to use her GI Bill benefits to earn a masters degree and doctorate in psychology to further her career.
By the time she retired in 2002 at the age of 87, she had served her community and nation as a pioneer in education and mental health care as well as for minorities in the Coast Guard.
Dr. Olivia Hooker
In Memory
Nicolas Roeg
Nicolas Roeg, the idiosyncratic filmmaker behind iconic cult pictures such as 1970's Performance and 1976's The Man Who Fell to Earth, passed away on Friday night. He was 90.
Born in North London on August 15, 1928, entered the film industry around 1947 after completing National Service. He began his career making tea and operating the clapper board at Marylebone Studios, eventually going on to work as a camera operator on a range of films, including 1959's Tarzan's Greatest Adventure and 1960's The Trials of Oscar Wilde.
Prior to directing, Roeg cut his teeth as a cinematographer, building a resume by adding his keen eye to a number of major productions: 1962's Lawrence of Arabia, 1964's The Masque of the Red Death, 1966's Fahrenheit 451, 1967's Far from the Madding Crowd, and 1968's Petulia.
In 1970, Roeg made his directorial debut with Performance, sharing a co-director credit with Donald Cammell. Starring Mick Jagger and James Fox, the gangster picture was actually completed in 1968, but was held back for two years over its violent content, the likes of which earned the film an X rating when it was finally released.
It didn't take long for him to followup Performance, and by 1971, he had already released Walkabout. The survival film set in the Australian Outback featured his own son Luc in a pivotal role and won critics over despite bombing at the box office.
Roeg's controversial filmmaking style persisted in 1973 with the now-iconic horror film, Don't Look Now, which starred Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland as a married couple coping with the death of their daughter. The graphic sexual content was falsely rumored to be real, earning the film another X rating in the UK. It's now considered one of the most terrifying entries of the genre.
Following this, Roeg would go on to work with musicians again, similar to Performance, specifically on 1976's David Bowie sci-fi stunner The Man Who Fell to Earth and 1980's Art Garfunkel psychological thriller Bad Timing. The former has since been considered a masterpiece for the genre, while the former prompted distributor Rank Organisation to remove its logo from the production altogether.
Bad Timing would wind up being a fitting name, at least for its distributors, as it marked the beginning of a three-film partnership between Roeg and British producer Jeremy Thomas. Things improved considerably with the following two pictures: 1983's Eureka starring Gene Hackman and 1985's Insignificance which would nab Roeg a Palme d'Or nomination at Cannes.
Following his work on 1986's Castaway and 1988's Track 29, Roeg would go on to adapt Roald Dahl's darkly comical children's fantasy book The Witches in 1990, collaborating with The Jim Henson Company. It would mark his final major studio picture with only three pictures following in its wake: 1992's Cold Heaven, 1995's Two Deaths, and 2007's Puffball.
"I don't look back on any film I've done with fondness or pride," Roeg told The Telegraph in 2013. "I look back on my films, and on the past generally … I can only use the phrase, 'Well, I'm damned.'"
Roeg is survived by his six children Waldo, Nico, Sholto, Luc, Max, and Statten.
Nicolas Roeg
In Memory
Ricky Jay
Known for his professional career as a magician and his roles in films like Boogie Nights and the HBO series Deadwood, Ricky Jay has died. He was 70.
Details about Jay's death have not been revealed, but his attorney Stan Coleman confirmed his death while his partner at Deceptive Practices, Michael Weber tweeted, "I am sorry to share that my remarkable friend, teacher, collaborator and coconspirator is gone."
Richard Jay Potash was born in Brooklyn, New York and had an impressive resume of films. In addition to Boogie Nights and Deadwood, Jay appeared in films such as Magnolia, Tomorrow Never Dies, The Spanish Prisoner, Mystery Men, and, appropriately, the magician drama The Prestige. He was also the subject of PBS' American Masters in 2015 and was the first magician to be profiled in the series. He was also the subject of the documentary Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay.
Acclaimed playwright David Mamet directed three of Jay's one-man shows which were "Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants", "Ricky Jay: On the Stem", and "Ricky Jay: A Rogue's Gallery." Mamet went on to cast him in his films Heist and House of Games.
Jay was also a consultant for magic, gambling, con games and unusual entertainment. That said, be became the man in Hollywood when it came to magic. He worked on Francis Ford Coppola's The Escape Artist and worked with Robert Redford on The Natural to show him how to manipulate coins.
Jay and Weber created their firm Deceptive Practices on the '90s and provided their expert services to film, TV, and stage productions. They helped design the wheelchair that gave the illusion that Gary Sinise had no legs in Forrest Gump and provided other tricks of the eye in movies such as Congo and for the Broadway production of Angels in America, part 2: Perestroik. They also worked on The Illusionist, Sneakers, and Oceans Thirteen.
Ricky Jay
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