The Weekly Poll
Current Question
The Executive Order Edition
What action would you have our President-elect do in his very first Executive Order?
1. Issue a new order pertaining to___________....
2. Repeal Dubya's outrageous order to_________ ....
There it is, Poll-fans! Short, sweet and so very important, don't ya know...
So, think hard! This a big deal! The very first one! One shot only! Bring it on (haha)!
Send your response, and a (short) reason why, to BadToTheBoneBob ( BCEpoll 'at' aol.com )
Results Tuesday
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Poor Elijah (Peter Berger): The Bigger Bailout (irascibleprofessor.com)
Every year I teach my eighth graders about the Great Depression. We talk about how Americans in the 1920s spent more money than they had. We talk about the enormous debt they ran up, and how that debt finally caught up with the nation's overheated economy and sank it. Every year some fourteen-year-old raises his hand and observes, "Isn't that like what people do with credit cards today?"
ANNE D'INNOCENZIO: Holiday Season May Already Be Over For Frantic Retailers
How bad will the season ultimately be for stores? Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wachovia Corp., expects total retail sales to fall 0.5 percent for November and December. That would be the first decline in holiday sales since 1982.
Ammon Shea: "Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages (popmatters.com)
As a child growing up in the 1980s in Chicago, my favorite show was Reading Rainbow. LeVar Burton, in a post-Roots and pre-Star Trek avatar, led me on a fantastic journey of the joys of reading. Now, as a college professor, I didn't think I had the capacity to learn-or re-learn-the joys of reading. Well, move over LeVar Burton. Ammon Shea is here to rock our world.
Marina Hyde: Justin's chimp charity under the microscope (guardian.co.uk)
Time now for occasional Lost in Showbiz feature Care-o-nomics, wherein we run the rule over celebrity attempts to give a toss about the less fortunate and ask: do you have any idea how lame that looks?
Brendan I. Koerner: The Long, Slow, Torturous Death of Zima (slate.com)
Fourteen years after its heyday, Zima is finally at peace.
Michael White: A tribute to the glorious Rostropovich (timesonline.co.uk)
The great cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who died last year, was a champion of freedom as well as a musician.
Veronica Schmidt: Britney Spears stages comeback in Germany (timesonline.co.uk)
The singer proves she is back on form with her first public performance since catastrophic outing at the MTV awards.
Pete Paphides: Chris Martin on success and celebrity (timesonline.co.uk)
Coldplay's frontman talks to Pete Paphides about coming to terms with celebrity and being just a little bit 'gangsta.'
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention: We're Only in It for the Money (popmatters.com)
Like all superficially idealistic youth movements, the love- and drug-crazed rebels of countercultural naïveté circa the late 1960s were incredible hypocrites.
David Hiltbrand: Hugh Jackman brings epic sexiness to film epic 'Australia' (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
"Australia," the audacious epic from visionary director Baz Luhrmann, is being hailed as the Pacific "Gone With the Wind." The movie's scintillating star, Hugh Jackman, endorses that comparison, but he also sees a number of other intentional echoes in "Australia."
wrote:
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Beautiful sunny day.
Learned a couple of expensive lessons this week - hot water heaters will not heal themselves once a leak has sprouted and cellphones don't like water.
Cincy Station Takes TV Show Call Letters
WKRP
WKRP is back on the air in Cincinnati - but this time it's for real.
A low-power TV station has changed its call letters to WKRP, the same as the fictional radio station in the 1970s hit series "WKRP in Cincinnati."
The station changed its call letters to promote its new digital TV signal. It formerly went by WBQC-TV.
WKRP
Fans Celebrate Film's 25th Year
'A Christmas Story'
Fans of the holiday classic "A Christmas Story" are celebrating the film's 25th anniversary with a convention and trips to the house where the movie was made.
The 1983 film, an adaptation of Jean Shepard's memoir of a boy in the 1940s, was set in Indiana but largely filmed in Ohio. The movie starred Peter Billingsley as Ralphie Parker, a young boy determined to get a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas.
The film was a modest theatrical success, but critics loved it. It eventually joined "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Miracle on 34th Street" as a Christmas cult classic.
About 4,000 fans are attending the convention at Cleveland's Renaissance Hotel, where they'll meet some of the film's actors, watch three documentaries made about the film and see the original 1938 fire truck from a famous scene in the movie involving a child's tongue stuck to a frozen pole.
'A Christmas Story'
Family Thanks Employees
Surprise Bonuses
Even though employees at the Peer Bearing Co. no longer work for the Spungen family that recently sold the Waukegan-based ball bearings maker, they still received a turkey each this Thanksgiving in keeping with tradition.
But even better was the gift that came in mid-September, when the Spungens threw a party to celebrate the company's acquisition by a Swedish company.
They gave away $6.6 million in year-end bonuses to Peer's 230 employees, decided by a formula based on each worker's years of service.
Family members signed two thank-you cards to each employee, one in Spanish and one in English, expressing gratitude for "the loyalty and hard work of our employees over the years."
Surprise Bonuses
Fetches 130,000 Pounds At Auction
Italian Truffle
Defying the economic downturn, an Italian white truffle weighing just over 1 kg (2.2 lb) sold at an international auction Saturday for $200,000 (130,000 pounds).
The prized tuber went for the second year running to Hong Kong-born casino mogul Stanley Ho after an auction held simultaneously in Rome, London, Abu Dhabi and Macau, auction organisers said.
Last December, Ho bought a 1.5-kg specimen -- one of the biggest truffles unearthed in half a century -- for a record $330,000.
Output of white truffles -- which are not cultivated and only grow naturally in forests -- has fallen in Italy over the past few years, largely because climate change has brought a damaging mix of drought and torrential rains.
Italian Truffle
End OfTthe (Yellow Brick) Road
Indiana Wizard of Oz Festival
An annual Wizard of Oz festival that once attracted 75,000 fans of the classic film to see the actors who played Munchkins has been cancelled, its organizers announced Friday.
Brenda Maynard, president of the Indiana Wizard of Oz Festival, said the low turnout at September's event caused by heavy rains and flooding was part of the decision to end the festival after 27 years.
"When you add to that the tough economy everyone is up against right now, as well as the advancing age of our Munchkin guests, who are one of the primary reasons this festival is so beloved, we had to make a decision that it's time to retire the festival," Maynard said.
At this year's festival, only three Munchkins from the 1939 film were still alive and well enough to attend. As many as 15 actors who played Munchkins attended the festival during its peak years.
Indiana Wizard of Oz Festival
Recovered In Washington
Bookmark
U.S. police recovered a stolen bookmark once reportedly given to Adolf Hitler by his mistress Eva Braun and arrested a man in a sting operation, authorities said on Wednesday.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said officers arrested Christian Popescu, 37, outside a coffee shop in Bellevue, Washington, on November 25, as he allegedly attempted to sell the 18-carat gold bookmark to undercover agents.
The bookmark was reportedly given as a present to Hitler by his long-term mistress in 1943 to console the German dictator after the German defeat at the hands of Soviet troops in the Battle of Stalingrad, ICE said in a news release.
It was among several items that had been due to be sold off by an auction house in Madrid, Spain, in October 2002, which were stolen by thieves.
Bookmark
Christie's Hong Kong Auction
Fine Wines
Global auction house Christie's sold HK$31.54 million ($4.07 million) of fine wine at a Hong Kong auction on Saturday, capitalizing on the growth of Asian demand for top vintages.
Sales at the auction, which was buoyed by a rare collection of vintages sourced from Chateau Latour's reserve cellars, topped a pre-sale estimate of $3.2 million, with 94 percent of lots sold.
Asian buyers bid strongly and paid well above market premiums for the vintages from Chateau Latour, which was bought by Christie's owner, French businessman Francois Pinault, in 1993.
A 12-bottle case of the 1961 vintage, considered one of Chateau Latour's greatest wines, fetched HK$1.32 million, a world record price at auction for that particular vintage, said Christie's.
Fine Wines
Ten Unusual
Marathons
As marathons proliferate, race organizers are working hard to come up with marketing schemes that will set their run apart and draw participants.
Some differentiate themselves with the entertainment along their 26.2 mile (41.2 km) course, or giveaways to runners, while others rely on their course and location to draw runners.
MARATHON DU MEDOC (Medoc wine region, France)
This marathon passes 50 chateaux, features Bordeaux wine at the water stations along the route, and provides foie gras to runners in need of refuelling.
LITTLE ROCK MARATHON (Little Rock, Arkansas)
This race features a "lipstick station" at Mile 26.1, so runners can freshen up before their finisher's picture. The race also boasts the largest finisher's medal, measuring 6.25 inches (15.6 cm) by 4.25 inches (10.6cm).
FLYING PIG MARATHON (Cincinnati, Ohio)
Popular with first-time marathoners and those who may have said they would run a marathon "when pigs fly." The title also honors the city's hog butchering history.
For the rest: Marathons
Recycles Reindeer Poop
Miller Park Zoo
The Christmas ornaments for sale at the Miller Park Zoo's gift shop are partly manufactured by reindeer.
Staffers make decorations out of droppings from the zoo's two reindeer, Ealu and Rika. The droppings are dried, then clear-coated and either painted or rolled in glitter.
Zoo marketing director Susie Ohley has named the products "magical reindeer gem ornaments," and each comes with a label of authenticity. They cost $5 at the zoo gift shop.
Some folks are surprised at the size of the "gems," which are only about as big as marbles. "Reindeer are so big," zoo maintenance worker Sheldon Williams said. But the droppings are "just a big pile of small."
Miller Park Zoo
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