Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Keeping GOP Honest
AttackWatch
Keeping His Word
Obama's Record.
Mark Morford: How to Be More Like Satan (SF Gate)
Often in the midst of my second glass of whisky do I ponder how it can be that seemingly savvy and knowledgeable people, people who clearly know better, people who you sense have a modicum of wisdom and perspective despite steaming piles of evidence to the contrary, how can such humans so brutally decide against their own better judgment, against their own inner voice, against what they must know, way down deep, to be honest and true?
Froma Harrop: Liberal Elite to Blame for Working-class Woes??? (Creators Syndicate)
The white working class is in big trouble, and the liberal elite is largely to blame. So says Charles Murray in his latest book, "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010." As a scholar at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, and this being an election year, wouldn't he just.
Juan Cole: 10 Catholic Teachings Conservatives Reject While Obsessing About Birth Control (AlterNet)
Santorum and Gingrich are both Catholics, and wear their faith on their sleeves, but they are hypocritical in picking and choosing when they wish to listen to the bishops.
Decca Aitkenhead: "Adam Ant: 'To be a pop star you need sex, subversion, style and humour'" (Guardian)
The dandy highwayman talks about surviving stardom, dealing with bipolar disorder and why he just wants to get on with making music.
David Bruce: Wise Up! Physicians (Athens News)
Oscar Levant went to analysis for years, but remained an unhappy man. When a friend asked what good psychoanalysis had done for him, Mr. Levant replied, "I'm still unhappy, but at least I have some place to go everyday."
David Bruce has 42 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $42 you can buy 10,500 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," "Maximum Cool," and "Resist Psychic Death."
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
BadtotheboneBob
Mushroom Head People
From the 'Attack of the Mushroom Head People' File...
Actually, this is from a London Fashion Week photo spread. Viewing them I now know why England is not a European fashion destination say, like, Paris or Milan.
Think English food... suet pudding, kidney pie etc etc and you'll get the idea. But, if you must, and I really don't recommend it unless you're into 'awful', here it is...London Fashion Week | freep.com | Detroit Life | Detroit Free Press
BttbBob
Thanks, B2tbBob!
Bosko Suggests
Rivers of Superlatives
Have a great day,
Bosko.
Thanks, Bosko!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunnier and warmer.
Awards Ceremony
Costume Designers Guild
"The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," "W.E." and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2" have won the top awards from the Costume Designers Guild, which handed out this awards season's last set of guild awards on Tuesday night.
"Dragon Tattoo" was honored as the best costume design in a contemporary film, while "W.E." won the award for period film and "Harry Potter" topped the fantasy film category.
"W.E.." which alternates scenes set in the 1920s and '30s with contemporary sequences, is the only one of the winners to also have an Oscar nomination.
In the past 10 years, the CDG has given an award to the eventual Oscar winner for costume design six times. All but one of those have come in the CDG's Period Film category or its predecessor, Period/Fantasy Film.
Television awards went to "Glee," "Boardwalk Empire" and "Downton Abbey."
Costume Designers Guild
'Angel Donors' Purchase
Ruby Red Slippers
Judy Garland's ruby red slippers from The Wizard Of Oz have found their way home.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences says it has acquired one of the four known surviving pairs of the iconic shoes made for the 1939 movie, with the help of Hollywood heavyweights Leonardo DiCaprio and Steven Spielberg.
The shoes, regarded as one of the world's best-known film props, are believed to have been worn by Garland's character Dorothy when she clicked her heels three times to return to Kansas from the fantasy land of Oz near the end of the movie.
The Academy, which organises the annual Oscars ceremony, says DiCaprio and Spielberg headed a group of "angel donors" to purchase the shoes for a planned museum.
The shoes, marked "#7 Judy Garland", are said to be the most pristine of the four pairs of slippers known to exist.
Ruby Red Slippers
Renewed By TBS For 2 More Years
'Conan'
Conan O'Brien's got his desk job for at least two more years.
TBS said Wednesday that its late-night host, who premiered with "Conan" in November 2010, has won an extension through April 2014.
O'Brien says, "I'll be taping episodes of 'Conan' well into the Ron Paul presidency.
TBS says "Conan" has recently charted a third consecutive month of audience growth. During 2012, it is averaging 1.1 million viewers.
'Conan'
Oscars To Drop Name From Awards Show
Kodak
The Academy Awards will be coming to you live from the same place - but with a different name.
Oscar organizers have agreed to drop mentions of the Kodak Theatre from Sunday's broadcast. The move follows bankruptcy proceedings for Eastman Kodak Co., which has received court approval to end its expensive naming-rights deal for the venue that's been home to the awards show for a decade.
In an interview aired Wednesday on KABC-TV in Los Angeles, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences President Tom Sherak said the show will refer to the venue as the Hollywood & Highland Center - after the retail and entertainment complex where the theater is located.
Sherak says the complex's landlord had asked that Oscar organizers drop the Kodak Theatre name from the ceremony.
Kodak
Philly Museum
The Franklin Institute
An Academy Award-nominated movie is casting a bright spotlight on an unusual machine at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
The science museum's 200-year-old automaton is a mechanical doll animated by a complex system of motors and cams. It can write three poems and draw four pictures.
Martin Scorsese's movie "Hugo" is nominated for 11 Academy Awards including best picture. The story has a similar machine playing a key role.
The film itself is based on Brian Selznick's award-winning "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," an illustrated novel about a Parisian boy and a broken automaton with a secret buried inside its mechanical memory.
The author visited the Philadelphia automaton while researching his book.
The Franklin Institute
Hospital News
Daniel Von Bargen
The 61 year-old actor Daniel Von Bargen has shot himself in the head and then made a dramatic call to the emergency services. In the call, the operator tries to keep the suffering actor talking until the paramedics arrive. A transcript of the 911 call has been published on the Daily Mail's website today (February 22, 2012).
The conversation apparently took place "about 10 minutes" after the shooting, according to Von Bargen. During the call, he explains to the operator that he shot himself in the head because he did not want to go to hospital. The actor, who is best known for playing the role of Mr Kruger in the comedy series Seinfeld, suffers from diabetes and has previously had a leg amputated as a result of the disease. He was due to go to hospital today but told the 911 dispatcher that he couldn't face another amputation: I was supposed to go to the hospital today and I didn't want to. I shot myself. I've already had one leg amputated... I'm tired."
Shortly after saying "I'm tired," Daniel Von Bargen reveals that he can hear someone at the front door. A policeman's voice is then heard, saying "Police department, let me see your hands, keep them right there," aware that a gun has been involved in the incident and keen to ensure that no further shots are fired. Von Bargen is reported to have been taken to Bethseda North hospital in Cincinnati. His condition is described as 'critical but improving.'
Daniel Von Bargen
Sent From Portland
Suspicious Mail
Several members of the Congress received mail threatening a biological attack and containing a suspicious powder later found to be harmless as law enforcement officials warned on Wednesday that more letters could be on their way.
A number of media organizations and TV shows, including the New York Times and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, received mail postmarked Oregon warning that letters had been sent to the Washington or local offices of all 100 U.S. senators and that 10 contained a deadly pathogen, a law enforcement source said.
House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, received a letter containing a powdery substance at one of his offices in his home state of Ohio, a Republican aide said, adding that the powder was harmless.
Other media that received the letters were The Colbert Report, Washington Post, USA Today, NPR, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Countdown with Keith Olbermann and Fox News.
Suspicious Mail
Sued To Block Merger
SAG-AFTRA
Ed Asner and Valerie Harper are teaming up on a new project: an attempt to take down the proposed merger of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
Asner and Harper, who starred in the 1970s "Mary Tyler Moore" series, have joined other high profile actors including Ed Harris and Martin Sheen in filing a lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court Wednesday seeking an injunction to stop SAG from calling for a vote on the proposed merger with AFTRA.
Referendum ballots will be mailed to members Feb. 27 and are due back March 30. The merger would be ratified only if at least 60% of those who vote approve the plan.
The suit alleges that the SAG board breached its fiduciary duties to conduct an actuarial impact study detailing the effects of the proposed merger on health and pension benefits of SAG members. SAG's board overwhelmingly approved a plan to merge with the smaller actors union, arguing that doing so would give them more leverage in negotiations with the studios and end years of turf wars between the two labor groups.
A minority of board members, among them Asner and Harris, have maintained that the proposed combination would weaken health and pension benefits for SAG's 125,000 members, about 40,000 of whom also belong to AFTRA.
SAG-AFTRA
Appeals Court Rules Against Widow
Roger Miller
The widow of country music legend Roger Miller doesn't own the rights to some of his biggest hits, including "King of the Road," a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Sony/ATV Music Publishing owns the renewal copyrights to the songs the artist published in 1964. Federal courts have already ruled that Sony owns the rights to Miller's songs that were published from 1958 to 1963.
In addition to "King of the Road," the songs include for "Dang Me," ''Chug-A-Lug" and "You Can't Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd." The decision struck down a lower court's ruling in widow Mary Miller's favor that awarded her a little more than $900,000 in damages.
Roger Miller died in 1992 after a battle with cancer. He was 56. "King of the Road" was his biggest hit, but he also received critical acclaim for writing the music and acting in the Tony-Award winning Broadway musical "Big River."
The singer left a will that stated that his widow was entitled to the rights to his work. But before he died he had assigned copyrights to his music to Sony, and in the months before his death, the publishing giant applied to renew the copyrights.
Roger Miller
CEOs' Clash Roils Company
Archie
The past three years have been upbeat ones for Archie, the everyteen hero of one of America's most enduring comics. He's gotten married - twice, no less. His social circle has expanded to include his first gay friend. He's even appeared on a postage stamp.
But behind the scenes, a bitter and sometimes bizarre feud has brewed at the company that produces the more than 70-year-old comic. Its two CEOs, a son of one founder and the daughter-in-law of another, are accusing each other of all sorts of funny business.
He and some other staffers say she's a volatile, abrasive menace who has sexually harassed employees with vulgar remarks, made bad business moves and even paraded a former football player around the office to intimidate people. She says he's a scheming chauvinist who has demeaned her, kept her in the dark about Archie Comic Publications' finances and invented allegations to try to force her out and seize control of the company.
He's asked a court to strip her of her role at the company. She's sued him for defamation and $100 million in damages. A judge has at least temporarily barred her from the company's suburban New York headquarters, fined her $500 over the ex-football player's visit and vowed to appoint a temporary receiver to protect the company's assets amid the fight if the two sides can't choose someone on their own by Wednesday.
The trouble began after the 2007 and 2008 deaths of former Archie Comic leaders Richard Goldwater and Michael Silberkleit, sons of two of the company's three founders. Silberkleit's widow, Nancy, and Goldwater's half-brother, Jonathan, became co-CEOs in 2009.
Archie
Journey Drummer Ordered To Anger Management
Deen Castronovo
Drummer Deen Castronovo from the rock group Journey was sentenced to 80 hours of community service in Oregon and ordered to attend anger-management classes for a domestic violence dispute.
The Statesman Journal newspaper reported the sentence Wednesday based on court documents.
The 47-year-old was arrested Jan. 20 after a dispute with a woman and charged with recklessly endangering another person, interfering with making a police report, criminal mischief and harassment.
The Statesman Journal reported the woman told police that Castronovo had accused her of cheating and they had broken up.
Deen Castronovo
Fined $80,000
MPTF
The Motion Picture and Television Fund's long-term care facility has been fined $80,000 over the death of a patient, according to the California Department of Public Health.
Although the patient was unnamed, two people close to the situation identified her as Carrie DeLay, an 89-year woman who fell to her death under mysterious circumstances in 2010.
As TheWrap first reported, the wheelchair-bound DeLay was found at the bottom of a staircase at the MPTF Woodland long-term care facility on October 17, 2010 after suffering a fall.
The state launched an investigation shortly thereafter. However, investigators could not find any witnesses who could explain the circumstances of her tumble. The wheelchair-bound patient was last seen 300 feet from the stairs. To get to them she should would have had to push open a heavy fire door.
DeLay had been a resident at the MPTF for more than a decade and suffered from advanced Alzheimer's disease.
MPTF
Found In Australia
Pink Diamond
Mining giant Rio Tinto said it has unearthed a "remarkable" 12.76 carat pink diamond in Australia, the largest of the rare and precious stones ever found in the resources-rich nation.
Named the Argyle Pink Jubilee, the huge rough stone was found at Rio's pink diamond operations in the Kimberley region of Western Australia and would take 10 days to cut and polish, the miner said on Wednesday.
Though it would not speculate on how much the Jubilee was worth, Rio said extremely high quality pink diamonds could fetch in excess of US$1 million per carat, meaning it is likely to go for at least $10 million.
According to local Aboriginal folklore, the Argyle mine was formed when a barramundi fish jumped through the net of three local hunters. The diamonds are its scales glinting in the sun and the pink ones are the fish's heart.
Pink Diamond
Collection Fetches $3.5M
Comics
The bulk of a man's childhood comic book collection that included many of the most prized issues ever published has sold for about $3.5 million.
Lon Allen, managing director of comics for Dallas-based Heritage Auctions, says Billy Wright's 1939 copy of Detective Comics No. 27 that features the debut of Batman got the top bid at the New York City auction Wednesday. It sold for about $523,000, including a buyer's premium.
Action Comics No. 1, a 1938 issue featuring the first appearance of Superman, sold for about $299,000. And Batman No. 1 from 1940 sold for about $275,000.
Wright died in 1994. Relatives found the 345 well-preserved comics he bought as a child while cleaning out his wife's Virginia home following her death last February.
Comics
Prime-Time Nielsens
Ratings
Prime-time viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for Feb. 13-19. Listings include the week's ranking and viewership.
1. "NCIS," CBS, 19.59 million.
2. "American Idol" (Wednesday), Fox, 18.89 million.
3. "American Idol" (Thursday), Fox, 18.71 million.
4. "The Voice," NBC, 16.28 million.
5. "NCIS: Los Angeles," CBS, 16.15 million.
6. "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 15.65 million.
7. "The Mentalist," CBS, 13.55 million.
8. "Person of Interest," CBS, 13.16 million.
9. "Two and a Half Men," CBS, 12.45 million.
10. "Criminal Minds," CBS, 12.20 million.
11. "60 Minutes," CBS, 11.78 million.
12. "Modern Family," ABC, 11.23 million.
13. "CSI," CBS, 11.09 million.
14. "Unforgettable," CBS, 11.03 million.
15. "Mike & Molly," CBS, 10.91 million.
16. "Blue Bloods," CBS, 10.81 million.
17. "Survivor: One World," CBS, 10.80 million.
18. "Undercover Boss," CBS, 10.78 million.
19. "Rob," CBS, 10.65 million.
20. "2 Broke Girls," CBS, 10.48 million.
Ratings
In Memory
Barney Rosset
Barney Rosset was not an author and never completed the memoir of his brave and wild life. But few over the past 60 years had so profound an impact on the way we read today.
Rosset, the fiery and fearless publisher who introduced the country to countless political and avant-garde writers and risked prison and financial ruin to release such underground classics as "Tropic of Cancer" and "Lady Chatterley's Lover," has died. He was 89.
As publisher of Grove Press, Rosset was a First Amendment crusader who helped overthrow 20th century censorship laws in the United States and profoundly expanded the American reading experience. Rosset had an FBI file that lasted for decades and he would seek out fellow rebels for much of his life.
Between Grove and the magazine Evergreen Review, which lasted from 1957 to 1973, Rosset published Samuel Beckett, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Jean-Paul Sartre, Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence and William Burroughs. He was equally daring as a film distributor, his credits including the groundbreaking erotic film "I Am Curious (Yellow)," and art-house releases by Jean-Luc Godard, Marguerite Duras and others.
Rosset himself was the subject of a movie, "Obscene," a 2008 documentary that included commentary from John Waters, Gore Vidal and Amiri Baraka. The same year, he received honorary citations from the National Coalition Against Censorship and from the National Book Foundation, which sponsors the National Book Awards.
A bon vivant who enjoyed long lunches and strong martinis, Rosset was a slightly built man with a brisk, peppery voice; and a breathless laugh, often at his own expense. His longtime editor in chief at Grove, Richard Seaver, would remember him as "often irascible, a control freak, prone to panic attacks," with a "sadistic element" that shadowed his "innate generosity." Rosset, interviewed by The Associated Press in 1998, called himself an "amoeba with a brain," ever slipping into enemy territory.
"I'm half-Jewish and half-Irish, and my mother and grandfather spoke Gaelic," he explained. "From an early age my feelings made the IRA look pretty conservative. I grew up hating fascism, hating racism."
A Chicago native, he was the only child of a banker, a rich kid with a passion for the arts and a rage to make trouble. His hero was John Dillinger, the nation's foremost bank robber. By eighth grade he was printing a newspaper called Anti-Everything and he had joined the left-wing American Student Union.
"By the time I was a sophomore in college, second year at UCLA, I had reports that government agents had entered my apartment and took books and that they followed my mail and who I sent things to," he said.
"At the time it was not fashionable to be against Hitler. It was called 'premature anti-fascism.' Then I volunteered in the infantry and that confused them."
Rosset's first interest was film. Cinematographer Haskell Wexler was a childhood friend and during World War II Rosset met the directors John Huston and Frank Capra while attending the Signal Corps photographic school. After leaving the service, he moved to Manhattan and produced "Strange Victory," a docudrama about racism in the post-war United States.
A minor investment changed his life, and changed the world. In 1951, he paid $3,000 for Grove Press, a publishing house with only three titles to its credit. Rosset put the books in a suitcase, carried them to his apartment and opened shop. The story of Grove soon became one of turning the obscure and the forbidden into the best-selling and the essential, from Burroughs' "Naked Lunch" to Beckett's "Waiting for Godot."
Rosset waged long and costly war on behalf of free expression. When he started Grove, his wish list included two erotic books, both decades old, that had never been distributed unexpurgated in the United States: Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and Miller's "Tropic of Cancer."
In 1954 a copy of "Chatterley" was mailed from Paris to New York. Officials seized it and charged Rosset with promoting "indecent and lascivious thoughts," a policy that dated back to obscenity legislation passed in the 1870s. Rosset sued the U.S. Post Office in 1959 and his attorney, Charles Rembar, crafted a defense based on a Supreme Court decision written two years earlier by Justice William Brennan that "all ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance - unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion - have the full protection of the guarantees."
A federal judge, Frederick van Pelt Bryan, ruled in Rosset's favor. An appeals court upheld Judge Bryan and the government declined to take the case to the Supreme Court. The Post Office's ability to declare a work obscene had effectively been ended.
In 1961, over a game of Ping-Pong, Rosset and Miller agreed to let Grove Press distribute "Tropic of Cancer." The book sold a million copies in its first year, but led to dozens of court cases; Rosset himself was arrested, fingerprinted and taken before a Brooklyn grand jury.
The jury refused to indict and in 1964 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for Grove.
"It's hard to remember how puritanical America is and was," Martin Garbus, a First Amendment lawyer and friend of Rosset's, told the AP in 1998. "Barney was the guy who fundamentally broke down censorship barriers in this country. He put up the money. There's a very famous picture of him in the Saturday Evening Post: Barney coming out of the sewer, lifting up the lid - the whole idea of him as this purveyor of filth."
Grove was equally busy defending its film releases. It was sued in the 1960s by the State of Massachusetts for releasing "Titicut Follies," Frederick Wiseman's horrifying documentary about the abuse of patients at Bridgewater State Hospital. The film was kept out of circulation until the 1990s. In 1968, Rosset attempted to distribute the erotic Swedish film "I Am Curious (Yellow)." The movie was seized by the U.S. Customs Office, screened in some communities and banned in others. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 4-4 on this case, with Justice William O. Douglas recusing himself because one of his books had been excerpted in Evergreen Review.
An appeals court later ruled the film could not be banned.
Other Grove books included "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," the anonymous erotic classic "The Story of O" and Che Guevara's "The Bolivian Diary." Rosset also attempted an ambitious union of film and avant-garde literature, short works written by Beckett, Eugene Ionesco and Harold Pinter. The trilogy was never completed, but the project did lead to one of the movies' most unusual collaborations, "Film," released in 1965 with a script by Beckett and a cast featuring Buster Keaton, just a year before his death.
Rosset only enjoyed limited profits from his legal victories. Although "I Am Curious (Yellow)" made millions and "Lady Chatterley" and other books sold well, he had to cover not only his own legal bills, but those of stores that carried his publications. Grove was also harmed by rival publishers who released cheaper editions of "Tropic of Cancer" and other works that had no copyright in the U.S.
By the late 1960s, the times were outrunning Rosset. When Grove employees attempted to unionize, he was enraged and fired the key organizers. The Grove offices were soon taken over by feminist protesters demanding that a union be permitted, among other concessions, and accusing Grove of treating women poorly. Rosset, the one-time upstart, called in the police. The occupiers left and the union was eventually voted down.
As longtime Random House editor Jason Epstein once observed, Rosset was "a gifted and courageous publisher and a terrible businessman." Using profits from "I Am Curious (Yellow)," he had overextended Grove, moving into fancy new offices the publisher couldn't afford. In 1985, to his lasting regret, Rosset was persuaded by British publisher George Weidenfeld to sell Grove to Ann and Gordon Getty. Rosset was supposed to remain president, but a year later he was fired. Grove, now Grove Atlantic Inc., still owns the list Rosset built.
In his later years, he ran the erotic publisher Blue Moon Books, although legal troubles left him nearly penniless. He worked on a memoir, revived the Evergreen Green Review online and even started a blog. Upon receiving his honorary National Book Award, Rosset reviewed his long history of defiance and stated that the "principal that no one has the right to tell us what we can and cannot read is one that has always been dear to me."
Rosset was married four times, including to the artist Joan Mitchell. He had three children.
In 1988, the PEN American Center awarded him with its Publisher Citation for "distinctive and continuous service to international letters, to the freedom and dignity of writers, and to the free transmission of the printed word across the barriers of poverty, ignorance, censorship, and repression." Last month, he was awarded the Literarian Award for outstanding service to American letters by the National Book Foundation.
Barney Rosset
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