Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Lauren Davis: Mordor recruitment video recasts the Fellowship of the Ring as the bad guys (io9)
So you're an orc living out your days in Mordor, minding your own business except when the occasional tasty trespasser wanders near your campsite. Then you start hearing rumors about nasty ring-addicted hobbits, powerful wizards, and violent elves preparing to invade your land. What can you do but join up with the Mordor army?
Mark Morford: Facebook in Sweet Decline (Slate)
Is it time? Are we about done with the hype and the bluster, the over-amped, OMG-what-has-happened-to-the-world amphetamine breathlessness? Can we get on with it, already?
Poor Elijah (Peter Berger): School's Proper Purpose (Irascible Professor)
Teachers aren't the only people who wonder, "Why am I here?" But given the increasingly varied nonacademic responsibilities that get dropped off at the schoolhouse door, from dentistry and diets to family counseling and composting, it's a reasonable question. Now another in a series of prominent educators has answered it.
'Bart Simpson' tries to provide a good example for Ohio University grads (Athens News)
In a witty and humorous address peppered with personal anecdotes and Bart-isms (and multiple comedic voices), [Nancy] Cartwright led off by stating, "I stand before you a confused but every successful 10-year-old boy." She challenged graduates to: Do what you love. "Be your own counsel," she advise graduates, and don't be led astray by so-called friends who are bad influences.
Generalists, Specialists, and Others: An Interview with George Scialabba
As for what not to read, I would say don't read your e-mail, or most of it. Don't read text messages, or tweets, or ads. Stay off Facebook. We all waste so much of our lives chatting, shopping, being assaulted by ads. And don't watch television. Television is an enormous realm, and there's a lot that's good--but it's very hard, almost impossible, not to find oneself relaxing into flabby, promiscuous spectatorship, just as it's very hard to eat only one or two potato chips.
Charlie Brooker: Human lives are nothing but a series of unfortunate upgrades. Yes, even yours (Guardian)
Some people say that I've become irrelevant. Well, one day we'll all become irrelevant.
Decca Aitkenhead: "Slavoj Zizek: 'Humanity is OK, but 99% of people are boring idiots'" (Guardian)
A genius with the answers to the financial crisis? Or the Borat of philosophy? The cultural theorist talks about love, sex and why nothing is ever what it appears to be.
Mark Stryker: Musician-artist Patti Smith unleashes her imagination on a museum tour (Detroit Free Press)
"Here's my favorite painting in the museum," says Patti Smith, bringing a hand up to her chest, as if the sight of her old friend caused her heart to skip a beat.
Rene Rodriguez: With 'Prometheus,' director steps back into the science-fiction arena (McClatchy Newspapers)
The "Space Jockey" - the seemingly-skeletal remains of a giant creature discovered by astronauts exploring a derelict spacecraft - is one of the most iconic images from 1979's "Alien."
Roger Ebert: Review of "Prometheus" (4 stars)
Ridley Scott's "Prometheus" is a magnificent science-fiction film, all the more intriguing because it raises questions about the origin of human life and doesn't have the answers. It's in the classic tradition of golden age sci-fi, echoing Scott's "Alien" (1979), but creating a world of its own. I'm a pushover for material like this; it's a seamless blend of story, special effects and pitch-perfect casting, filmed in sane, effective 3-D that doesn't distract.
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."
Dita Von Teese Blaze Starr.
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
BadtotheboneBob
Turtles
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and cooler than seasonal.
Pleads Guilty To Trespass
Lucy Lawless
Actress Lucy Lawless has pleaded guilty to trespass after she and other activists protested aboard an oil-drilling ship docked in New Zealand.
She is due to be sentenced in September and faces a maximum three years in jail. Prosecutors reduced a more serious charge of burglary.
Lawless, 44, a native New Zealander, is best known for her title role in the TV series "Xena: Warrior Princess," and more recently for starring in the Starz cable television series "Spartacus."
In February, she and five other Greenpeace environmental activists spent four days perched atop a 174-foot (53-meter) drilling tower on the Noble Discoverer in Port Taranaki in a protest against Arctic oil exploration. Eight activists pleaded guilty Thursday at the Auckland District Court.
Lucy Lawless
CNN Cancels
John King
CNN is canceling John King's evening news show, making him the first victim of the network's bad stretch in the ratings.
"JK USA" has aired at 6 p.m. ET since 2010. CNN said Wednesday that Wolf Blitzer's "Situation Room" would expand to three hours, and King will become the network's lead national campaign correspondent.
CNN has been suffering this spring in the ratings, particularly since interest in following the presidential campaign on television hasn't heated up. King's show was routinely CNN's least-watched in the evening.
John King
"Sharon Needles Day"
Pittsburgh
A drag queen who won the most recent season of the "RuPaul's Drag Race" reality TV show has been honored by the Pittsburgh City Council and received a kiss from one councilman.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that Councilman Patrick Dowd pecked the cheek of 30-year-old Aaron Coady, better known as Sharon Needles, who arrived in a blond wig, black gloves, black lipstick and pointy sunglasses.
Dowd says Needles "forces us to reconsider questions around young people and bullying and ask what can we do to be a more open and inviting city."
Needles told the council after it declared Tuesday "Sharon Needles Day" that "beneath the 30 pounds of makeup and corsets and gowns are real beating hearts of real people and they usually come from a place of pain."
Pittsburgh
Hospital News
Jerry Lewis
A publicist for Jerry Lewis says the comedian is OK after being hospitalized in New York overnight.
The 86-year-old Lewis had a health scare Tuesday night just before he was scheduled to receive an award and present another to Tom Cruise at the Friars Club Entertainment Icon Awards.
Publicist Candi Cazau in Las Vegas says colleagues have told her Lewis is fine. She says he is very busy and simply forgot to eat or drink and his blood sugar level took a dive.
Jerry Lewis
Judge Sets Hearing
"The Glass House"
A federal judge has set a hearing on a motion by CBS to block the premiere of the upcoming ABC reality series "The Glass House" on the basis it copies elements and secrets from the long-running show "Big Brother.
U.S. District Judge Gary Feess scheduled arguments for Friday morning, just days before "Glass House" is scheduled to premiere on Monday night.
CBS wants the show knocked from airwaves because it claims the new series violates "Big Brother" copyrights and several of its former staffers now working with ABC have violated non-disclosure agreements.
Both shows will feature contestants who are constantly filmed, although ABC claims its series greatly emphasizes audience participation and popularity to determine events on the show.
"The Glass House"
Helps FBI
Metallica
Metallica has made a public service video as part of a law enforcement publicity blitz to try to catch a man wanted in the death of a Virginia Tech student who disappeared after one of the heavy metal band's concerts.
Composite sketches of the suspect will be featured at bus shelters and on digital billboards up and down the East Coast, and a video on the Internet from lead singer James Hetfield urges people to come forward with tips.
"Remember, any information - no matter how small you might think it is - could be that crucial piece investigators need to help solve the case," Hetfield said in the video, which was on YouTube and an FBI website dedicated to the case. The FBI and Virginia State Police announced the campaign on Wednesday.
Morgan Harrington, a 20-year-old aspiring teacher and Virginia Tech student, disappeared after an October 2009 concert in Charlottesville, Va. Her skeletal remains were discovered about three months later in a remote hay field about 10 miles from the concert venue. Her T-shirt was found in front an apartment building near the area. A camera and a crystal necklace she had with her were never located. She was last seen hitchhiking.
Metallica
JD's Son Stunned By Veto Of NH Bill
Matt Salinger
J.D. Salinger's son said Wednesday he's stunned that a bill aimed at protecting his late father's privacy has been vetoed in New Hampshire, where the intensely private author of "The Catcher in the Rye" lived for decades before his death in 2010.
The bill would have specified that a person's right to control the commercial use of his or her identity is inheritable, and remains in effect for 70 years past death. It was filed at the request of Matt Salinger, who spent the last two years working with lawmakers to get it through the House and Senate.
"I'm stunned and just hugely disappointed that Gov. (John) Lynch saw fit to veto something that was the result of thousands of hours of well-intentioned, diligent, bipartisan work," Salinger told The Associated Press. He said the bill was in keeping with New Hampshire's "Live Free or Die" motto, which was part of what led his father to settle in rural Cornish.
In his veto, Lynch called the bill overly broad and said it could have a chilling effect on legitimate journalistic and expressive works protected by the state and federal constitutions.
Matt Salinger
Sued For Defamation
Bri$tol Palin
A man who heckled Bristol Palin in a Los Angeles bar and insulted her conservative politician mother, Sarah Palin, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday accusing the single mom of defamation.
Talent manager Stephen Hanks also sued cable channel Lifetime, which includes film of the 2011 incident in Bristol Palin's upcoming reality TV show, claiming he had not given the program's makers his permission to be filmed.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. federal court in Los Angeles, stems from a widely publicized September 2011 incident at a bar and restaurant on the famous Sunset Strip.
Hank's lawyer, Los Angeles-based Michael Gulden said Hanks had tried without success to solve the matter outside the courts with Lifetime and its parent company A&E Television Networks, which is owned by NBCUniversal, Disney-ABC Television, and the Hearst Corporation.
Bri$tol Palin
Eiffel Tower Show Nixed
Prince
US pop star Prince has been refused permission by the mayor of Paris for a concert under the Eiffel Tower on July 14 because it would clash with Bastille Day celebrations, a close aide said Wednesday.
"There was a request from the producer of Prince in France to organize a concert on July 14," said the aide to mayor Bertrand Delanoe.
"But our priority is the July 14 fireworks at the Eiffel Tower, which is not compatible with this project.
Prince, who regularly comes to France, had wanted to give a free concert on the French national day in partnership with a charity, and the show would reportedly have been filmed for release in 3-D cinemas.
Prince
Ending After Upcoming Season
"Weeds"
Showtime's Mary-Louise Parker pot dealer dramedy "Weeds" will end after its upcoming eighth season, the network said.
The series, which returns for its final season July 1, has followed suburban widow Nancy Botwin as she tries to provide for her family by selling pot. The setting of the Jenji Kohan-created series has shifted during its run from California to Seattle, Wash., Dearborn, Mich., New York City, and - in the season 7 finale - to Connecticut.
Among the show's 20 Emmy nominations were three for Parker for outstanding lead actress in a comedy and three for Elizabeth Perkins for supporting actress in a comedy. The show was also nominated for best comedy in 2009. It won an Emmy for sound mixing in 2009 and for cinematography in 2010.
"Weeds"
Foundation Sells Suburban Chicago Home
Ernest Hemingway
The suburban Chicago house where Ernest Hemingway is believed to have written some of his earliest works will be converted back into a single-family home, but fans of the novelist are welcome to visit, the new owners said.
The Ernest Hemingway Foundation put the Oak Park property on the market in February and Kurt and Mary Jane Neumann closed a $525,000 deal on the home on Tuesday.
The foundation bought the house in 2001 in hopes of turning it into a cultural center but couldn't make the finances work, according to John Berry, the group's chairman. The home has been divided into three apartments since the 1930s.
Hemingway's mother, Grace, helped design the slate-blue, three-story stucco home, which they moved into in 1906. Ernest Hemingway lived there until he graduated from high school and left for a reporting job at the Kansas City Star. He is believed to have written some of his earliest works in his third-floor bedroom.
Ernest Hemingway
Feds OK Larger Crowd
Burning Man
Ten thousand more people are expected to be on hand in the Nevada desert for this year's Burning Man festival after federal officials increased the event's attendance cap.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management issued a special recreation permit to San Francisco-based Black Rock City LLC, the nonprofit group behind Burning Man. The permit allows 60,900 people to attend the arts festival, up from 50,000 last year. Officials announced the increase Tuesday.
Organizers had requested the change in the face of growing demand for tickets. The request was met with little opposition.
The annual arts and music gathering takes place in the sprawling Black Rock Desert, about 100 miles north of Reno, during the week leading up to Labor Day. It's overseen by federal officials because it takes place on public land.
Burning Man
Berlin Police Release Photo
"Forest Boy"
Berlin police on Wednesday released photos an English-speaking teenage boy who wandered into the city nine months ago saying he had been living for the last five years in the forest with his father.
Police spokesman Thomas Neuendorf said all attempts to identify the boy since he emerged in the German capital on Sept. 5 have been unsuccessful, and they are now hoping the release of his photo may produce some leads.
The boy has told authorities his father called him "Ray" and that he was born June 20, 1994, but claims not to know his last name or where he's from.
Neuendorf said that Ray does not speak English with a particular accent, leading investigators to believe that he is not a native speaker. There are no indications, however, of what his native tongue might be.
Ray is described as being somewhere between 16-20 years old and 180 cm (about 5-foot 11-inches) tall. He has dark blonde hair and blue eyes, and three small scars on his forehead, three small scars on his chin and a small scar on his right arm.
"Forest Boy"
Documents To Auction
George Washington
A gold-embossed piece of U.S. history will go up for sale this month, when Christie's auctions off George Washington's personal copy of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The documents, which date to 1789 and are signed and annotated by the first U.S. president, are poised to fetch from $2 million to $3 million when they hit the block on June 22, the auction house said on Wednesday.
The bound papers constitute Washington's personal copy of the Acts of Congress. These include the Constitution, whose preamble promises to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity," along with the draft Bill of Rights - the first 10 amendments to the Constitution which include such fundamental liberties as the right to free speech, press, assembly and religion.
The volume, embossed with "President of the United States" in gold on the cover, was described by Christie's as being in near-pristine condition after 223 years. It was specially printed for Washington in 1789, his first year in office as president.
The margins include Washington's handwritten brackets and notations highlighting key passages concerning the president's responsibilities.
George Washington
90 Percent Accurate
Shoes
Researchers at the University of Kansas say that people can accurately judge 90 percent of a stranger's personality simply by looking at the person's shoes.
"Shoes convey a thin but useful slice of information about their wearers," the authors wrote in the new study published in the Journal of Research in Personality. "Shoes serve a practical purpose, and also serve as nonverbal cues with symbolic messages. People tend to pay attention to the shoes they and others wear."
Some of the results were expected: People with higher incomes most commonly wore expensive shoes, and flashier footwear was typically worn by extroverts.
However, some of the more specific results are intriguing. For example, "practical and functional" shoes were generally worn by more "agreeable" people, while ankle boots were more closely aligned with "aggressive" personalities.
The strangest of all may be that those who wore "uncomfortable looking" shoes tend to have "calm" personalities.
Shoes
In Memory
Frances Williams Preston
Frances Williams Preston, who worked with top songwriters as president of the royalties company Broadcast Music Inc., died Wednesday. She was 83.
Preston was president of New York-based BMI, which collects and distributes royalties to songwriters, from 1986 to 2004. Before that, she was head of the company's office in Nashville, where she was born and grew up.
During her career, Preston worked with dozens of artists including Kris Kristofferson, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Roy Orbison, Loretta Lynn, Waylon Jennings and Tammy Wynette. As BMI president, she oversaw a company that represented Paul Simon, Janet Jackson, Sting and others.
In 1998, Preston received the highest Grammy award given to a non-performer, the National Trustees Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
Preston was credited with coining the Nashville songwriter's creed, "It all begins with a song."
Preston retired from BMI in 2004 and returned to Nashville in 2007.
Frances Williams Preston
In Memory
Mehdi Hassan
Mehdi Hassan, a Pakistani singer loved by millions across South Asia, has died after a protracted illness. He was 85.
Hassan's son Asif Mehdi says his father died Wednesday. He was ill and unable to sing for 10 years.
Hassan was born in 1927 in what is now India but migrated to Pakistan with his family after the 1947 creation of the Muslim state.
In his early days, he worked at a bicycle shop and as a car mechanic before he gained fame for his mastery of the Ghazal, a traditional love poem expression put to music. He became known as the "King of Ghazal."
His songs rang out frequently across markets and buses, in homes across Pakistan and beyond, and were the soundtrack to more than 300 Pakistani films.
Mehdi Hassan
In Memory
Henry Hill
Henry Hill spent much of his life as a "goodfella," believing his last moment would come with a bullet to the back of his head. In the end he died at a hospital after a long illness, going out like all the average nobodies he once pitied.
Hill, who went from small-time gangster to big-time celebrity when his life as a mobster-turned-FBI informant became the basis for the Martin Scorsese film "Goodfellas," died Tuesday at age 69, longtime girlfriend Lisa Caserta told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Hill had open heart surgery last year and died of complications from longtime heart problems related to smoking, she said.
An associate in New York's Lucchese crime family, Hill told detailed, disturbing and often hilarious tales of life in the mob that first appeared in the 1986 book "Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family," by Nicholas Pileggi, a journalist Hill sought out shortly after becoming an informant.
In 1990 the book, adapted for the screen by Pileggi and Scorsese, became the instant classic Goodfellas," starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci andRay Liotta as Hill, a young hoodlum on the make who thrives in the Mafia but is eventually forced by drugs to turn on his criminal friends and lead the life of a sad suburbanite.
Unlike older Mafia tales, which focused on family and honor, "Wiseguy" and "Goodfellas" mostly dwelled on how utterly awesome it was to be in the mob - on the gangster as rock star - at least until the life caught up with you.
Born in Brooklyn to an Irish father and an Italian mother, Hill's life with the mob began at age 11 when he wandered into a cabstand across the street in 1955 looking for work. He soon knew the life of these silk-suited soldiers was for him.
He began running errands for the men at the stand that soon led to small-time crimes. He was first arrested at age 16 for using a stolen credit card in an attempt to buy tires for the brother of gang leader Paul Vario, and impressed the gang leaders for refusing to squeal on them.
Far bigger crimes awaited, including the 1967 theft of $420,000 in cash from the Air France cargo terminal at JFK airport in New York, among the biggest cash heists in history at the time.
And in 1978, Hill had a key role in the theft of $5.8 million in cash from a Lufthansa Airlines vault, a heist masterminded by Jimmy Burke, the inspiration for De Niro's character in "Goodfellas."
He was also selling drugs behind the back of his boss, Vario, and in 1980 was arrested on a narcotics-trafficking charge.
More afraid of his associates than prison, Hill decided he had no choice but to become an informant, and signed an agreement with a Department of Justice task force that would prove more fruitful than anyone imagined.
Hill's testimony sent dozens of men to prison, many for the Lufthansa heist, and he and his wife Karen, played by Lorraine Bracco in the movie, went into hiding together, spending years fearing retribution by a gun to the back of his head from his old colleagues.
In the early 1990s, after more drug arrests, Hill was booted from the witness protection program.
His fears for his life waned as many former associates died off, and he led a more public life in later years, appearing in documentaries and becoming a popular call-in guest on Howard Stern's radio show.
Hill summered in Southern California at an extremely modest one-story house in the Topanga Canyon area of the Santa Monica Mountains, with an expansive backyard view of the San Fernando Valley.
Sitting on the back porch, Caserta, 52, and her son, Nate, 24, described the contemporary Hill as a man who maintained a mobster's air of self-assurance and confidence but regretted his gangster past.
An avid painter who contributed his artwork to auctions, he gave money to causes ranging from local police cadets to the homeless, and every Thanksgiving for five years he would dish out food to the poor, said Caserta and her son.
Caserta said that Hill, who also had a home in Connecticut, is survived by three sisters, a brother, three children and four grandchildren. She said she could not give their names because they are in witness protection.
Henry Hill
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