Recommended Reading
from Bruce
100 DAY IMPACT ON YOUR STATE
"Take [a] minute to check out this interactive map. More exciting to me are the increased emphasis on funding basic research, on rebuilding infrastructure, and the like. But that may be because I don't have to worry about losing my job or providing a poor child with health insurance or making ends meet." -- Andrew Tobias
Mark Morford: The vampires of Facebook (sfgate.com)
Could it actually be dangerous to connect with everyone you ever knew?
Sam Kean: Where's Our Scapegoat? (slate.com)
Meet Ivar Kreuger, greedy villain of the 1930s.
Jack Shafer: Newspaper Death Foretold by Warren Buffett!!! (slate.com)
In 1992, the oracle of Omaha predicted the decline of newspapers, magazines, and TV.
Rob Horning: Box Of Books In The Trash (popmatters.com)
Who says serendipity is dead? While I was jogging around my neighborhood yesterday, my run was interrupted by one of my favorite things to stumble upon-a box of books being thrown out.
Michael Dirda : Review of "Graham Greene: A Life in Letters," edited by Richard Greene (weeklystandard.com)
Nobody, as the literary scholar Samuel Hynes once observed, has ever wanted to be a Graham Greene character. His men and women are murderers, traitors, unhappy adulterous lovers, sinners of every stripe--and he doesn't glamorize their seediness, their misery, or their desperation. Evelyn Waugh bluntly called them "charmless." Nearly all of them dwell in a shadowy fictive world of hunter and hunted, where love itself leads mainly to anguish and loss.
'Nina Simone' by David Brun-Lambert (timesonline.co.uk)
The 'Sunday Times' review by Clive Davis: A life of extraordinary talent marred by ill-fated liaisons and inner turmoil.
20 QUESTIONS: Indigo Girls (popmatters.com)
Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls tells us how she'd like to dine with Jesus and urges the President to legalize gay marriage.
Len Righi: Indie-folk act Lewis & Clarke shines a soft light (The Morning Call)
Over 20-plus years as a musician, Lou Rogai has learned that a whisper can be as powerful as a scream.
Doves: 'We never wanted to be rock stars' (guardian.co.uk)
Their manager died, their studio burned down, and they missed out on a No 1 spot by four sales. But Doves refuse to be bitter. Simon Hattenstone joins the band on tour.
Roger Ebert: Movies that are made for forever
I have feelings more than ideas. I am tired, but very happy. My 11th annual film festival has just wrapped at the Virginia Theater in my home town, and what I can say is, it worked. There is no such thing as the best year or the worst year. But there is such a thing as a festival where every single film seemed to connect strongly with the audience. Sitting in the back row, seeing these films another time, sensing the audience response, I thought: Yes, these films are more than good, and this audience is a gathering of people who feel that.
Christopher Goodwin: "Sasha Grey: from porn star to film star" (timesonline.co.uk)
Sasha Grey plays the lead in 'The Girlfriend Experience,' an art-house Secret Diary of a Call Girl about a New York 'escort.'
The Weekly Poll
The 'First 100 Days - Pluses and Minuses' Edition...
Well, Poll-fans, President Obama, aka 'The Man', has reached the first 100 days of his administration. We might as well jump on the wagon with everyone who is evaluating his work and make an assessment of our own...
What are the Pluses and the Minuses of The Man's First Hundred days?
Send your response, and a (short) reason why, to
What is the name of Gumby's dog?
replied:
Talkeetna 'Incident'
Alaska
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Overcast til lunchtime, then nice & sunny.
Mouths Off Against H8
Shanna Moakler
Former Miss USA Shanna Moakler has been pretty vocal about what she thinks of Miss California Carrie Prejean's views on gay marriage.
Moakler, who is executive director of the Miss California USA pageant, along with Miss USA 2006 first runner-up Tamiko Nash and last year's titleholder Raquel Beezley were in a photo studio last night being shot by Adam Bouska for NOH8, a campaign to support efforts to overturn Proposition 8...
The three women were shot together with duct tape over their mouths, a symbol of their voices not being heard, and "NOH8" painted on their cheeks.
The project was started by Bouska, 25, and his partner, Jeff Parshley, 28, in November after the passage of Prop 8 outlawed same-sex unions in the state.
"We never expected to have so many beauty queens participate. The whole campaign, obviously, is not a direct message to Miss California, but now she happened to have put herself in the line of fire," Bouska says about his newest pic of the Moakler et al.
Shanna Moakler
Duke Ellington Painting To Smithsonian
Tony Bennett
Tony Bennett donated a watercolor he made of longtime friend Duke Ellington to a Smithsonian museum on Wednesday, the 110th anniversary of the jazz great's birth.
The painting depicts Ellington with a bouquet of pink roses in the background. The jazz musician made a habit of sending Bennett a dozen roses when he wrote a new tune in hopes that Bennett would record the piece.
"Every time the roses came, I said 'Oh, Duke wrote another song,'" Bennett said.
Bennett, 82, has been a lifelong painter and still takes up a brush every day. He gave the watercolor to the National Portrait Gallery, the third painting he has donated to the Smithsonian Institution, following a portrait of jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald and a painting of New York's Central Park.
Tony Bennett
Tom Hanks Tribute
Julia Roberts
Tom Hanks was the guest of honour at the Film Society of Lincoln Center Gala Tribute, attended by a star-studded audience of friends and former colleagues.
After entertainment, including a performance by Bruce Springsteen and his wife Patti Scialfa, Roberts, who appeared alongside Hanks in 2007 movie Charlie Wilson's War, stepped onstage to toast her pal with a hilarious, foul-mouthed rant.
After starting with the line, "OK, it's late and I'm paying my babysitter overtime and I have to pee," the Pretty Woman star noted, "Everybody f**king likes you", and then complimented Hanks' wife Rita Wilson's breasts, figure and perfect butt before giving a critique of some of the star's less acclaimed movies.
She joked, "Tom Hanks, what the f**k? Bosom Buddies, people... (I'm a) big fan, big fan. I saw Turner and Hooch, The Money Pit... You in the airport with the accent (The Terminal) - it was a pass for me."
Julia Roberts
To Plant 2.7 Million Trees
Disney
Walt Disney Studios is turning box-office cash from its nature documentary "Earth" into seed money to plant trees in the rain forest.
Disney had announced it would plant one tree in Brazil's endangered Atlantic rain forest for every viewer who saw the movie during its first week. According to Disney, the box-office tally hit $16.1 million, which translates to 2.7 million trees.
The trees are being planted by the Nature Conservancy, which is trying to reforest 2.5 million acres in the rain forest.
Disney
Jury Duty
Mr. T
Mr. T showed up for jury duty, then was dismissed after hours of down time - which he used to sign autographs and pose for pictures.
Mr. T was called for jury duty at Cook County Circuit Court on Monday. The Chicago native said he enjoyed fulfilling his civic responsibilities, even though he found - like countless others - that hours can pass before a judge decides to dismiss you.
He showed up for jury duty in camouflage pants, a T-shirt and a longer version of his usual Mohawk haircut.
Mr. T
Roman Glass Dish Found
Londinium
Archaeologists have unearthed a Roman glass bowl, thought to be a unique find in the Western Roman Empire, at an ancient cemetery beyond the walls of the old city of London.
The "millefiori" dish (a thousand flowers), believed to date from around the 2nd to 3rd century A.D., is a mosaic of hundreds of indented blue petals with white bordering.
Archaeologists said the dish was colored bright red when it was first pulled from the earth, as the intricate design was imbedded in opaque red glass.
The bright vermilion color has slowly disappeared since excavation as the water-saturated glass dried out. The moisture had preserved the original coloring, but some of the pigment is still distinguishable around the rim.
Londinium
Travolta Case
Bahamas
An ambulance driver and a former senator have pleaded not guilty to charges that they tried to extort $25 million from actor John Travolta following the death of his teenage son in the Bahamas.
Former Sen. Pleasant Bridgewater remains free on $50,000 bail as does Tarino Lightbourne. He also no longer has to report daily to police.
They pleaded not guilty Tuesday to conspiracy to commit extortion and aiding to attempted extortion.
Both are accused of demanding money to keep secret a document related to the treatment of the celebrity's son. Jett Travolta died of a seizure in January at a family vacation home in Grand Bahama.
Bahamas
Released From Prison
Lane Garrison
Lane Garrison, who was serving a sentence of three years and four months for a drunken driving crash, has been released from prison.
The former "Prison Break" actor was paroled and picked up at 3:50 a.m. Wednesday from the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi, Calif., Lt. Jon Bartelmie said.
Garrison was charged after a December 2006 crash in which he rammed his Land Rover into a tree, killing Vahagn Setian, 17, and injuring two other teenage girls.
He later pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter and misdemeanor counts of drunken driving and giving alcohol to a minor.
Lane Garrison
Slaughtering All Pigs
Egypt
Egypt began slaughtering the roughly 300,000 pigs in the country Wednesday as a precaution against swine flu even though no cases have been reported here, infuriating farmers who blocked streets and stoned vehicles of Health Ministry workers who came to carry out the government's order.
The measure was a stark expression of the panic the deadly outbreak is spreading around the world, especially in poor countries with weak public health systems. Egypt responded similarly a few years ago to an outbreak of bird flu, which is endemic to the country and has killed two dozen people.
At one large pig farming center just north of Cairo, scores of angry farmers blocked the street to prevent Health Ministry workers in trucks and bulldozers from coming in to slaughter the animals. Some pelted the vehicles with rocks and shattered their windshields and the workers left without killing any pigs.
"We remind Hosni Mubarak that we are all Egyptians. Where does he want us to go?" said Gergis Faris, a 46-year-old pig farmer in another part of Cairo who collects garbage to feed his animals. "We are uneducated people, just living day by day and trying to make a living, and now if our pigs are taken from us without compensation, how are we supposed to live?"
Egypt
Another Good Catholic
Silvio Berlusconi
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's penchant for pretty women is a source of "suffering" for his wife, she wrote in an open letter published Wednesday.
"I want it to be clear that I and my children are the victims and not accomplices in this situation. We must put up with it and that makes us suffer," Veronica Lario wrote.
The letter, the second such public outburst from Lario, dealt mainly with Berlusconi's choices of candidates from his People of Freedom party to stand in European Union elections set for June. Some are reportedly pretty young women with no political experience.
Lario also had a comment Wednesday about Berlusconi's presence at a birthday party in Naples for a pretty 18-year-old.
"I was very surprised to learn that, because he didn't come to any of his children's 18th birthday parties, even though he was invited."
Silvio Berlusconi
Prime-Time Nielsens
Ratings
Prime-time viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen Media Research for April 20-26. Listings include the week's ranking, with viewership for the week and season-to-date rankings in parentheses. An "X" in parentheses denotes a one-time-only presentation.
1. (2) "American Idol" (Tuesday), Fox, 23.96 million viewers.
2. (1) "American Idol" (Wednesday), Fox, 23.95 million viewers.
3. (3) "Dancing With The Stars," ABC, 20.53 million viewers.
4. (7) "Dancing With The Stars Results," ABC, 14.73 million viewers.
5. (4) "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," CBS, 14.64 million viewers.
6. (X) "Criminal Minds" special, CBS, 13.72 million viewers.
7. (9) "Desperate Housewives," ABC, 13.64 million viewers.
8. (15) "Grey's Anatomy" ABC, 13.51 million viewers.
9. (X) "NCIS" special, CBS, 12.65 million viewers.
10. (X) "The Mentalist" special, CBS, 12.46 million viewers.
11. (11) "Two and a Half Men," CBS, 11.48 million viewers.
12. (17) "Survivor: Tocantins," CBS, 11.3 million viewers.
13. (26) "Rules of Engagement," CBS, 10.59 million viewers.
14. (20) "Cold Case," CBS, 10.57 million viewers.
15. (9) "60 Minutes," CBS, 10.52 million viewers.
16. (20) "24," Fox, 10.34 million viewers.
17. (28) "Amazing Race 14," CBS, 10.27 million viewers.
18. (49) "Fringe," Fox, 9.9 million viewers.
19. (30) "Surviving Suburbia," ABC, 9.87 million viewers.
20. (12) "Criminal Minds," CBS, 9.84 million viewers.
Ratings
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