Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Mark Morford: A summer reading list to die for (SF Gate)
Do you have a summer reading list? I have a summer reading list. Mine is, I admit, sort of wayward and delicious and not a little bit weird.
Matt Miller: "Romney vs. teachers unions: The inconvenient truth"
That reality is this: The top performing school systems in the world have strong teachers unions at the heart of their education establishment. This fact is rarely discussed (or even noted) in reform circles. Yet anyone who's intellectually honest and cares about improving our schools has to acknowledge it. The United States is an outlier in having such deeply adversarial, dysfunctional labor-management relations in schooling.
Mark Shields: Mark Hanna was Right (Creators Syndicate)
Mark Hanna, the Cleveland industrialist who managed the winning presidential campaign of his fellow Ohio Republican William McKinley, offered this timeless insight: "There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can't remember what the second is."
Jesse Ventura: A Devilish Marriage Of Church And State (Disinformation)
Not long after I became governor of Minnesota in 1999, I got in a whole lot of hot water with certain politicians and media types for saying in an interview with Playboy: "Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people's business…. The religious right wants to tell people how to live."
Vicky Frost: "Kenneth Branagh: wallowing in Wallander" (Guardian)
Kenneth Branagh used to find playing Wallander so grim, he went to flower shows to cheer himself up. Vicky Frost joins the newly knighted actor in Sweden to talk about the new series - and his plans to make a drama about Belfast and the Troubles.
Alexis Petridis on glam rock (Guardian)
Thank you, glam rock, for years of pop bedlam.
Tim Adams: "Richard Ford: 'America beats on you so hard the whole time'" (Guardian)
The great American novelist Richard Ford on his novel 'Canada,' the joys of growing old and the dangers of criticising the US.
Chris Erskine: A father's special, splashy day (LA Times)
Took the daughters surfing the other day. I've noticed lately that most of the activities they like have dollar signs in front of them. In fact, one of them just legally changed her name to Vi$a. Tough decision. It was either that or Cha-Ching.
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'
Sacramento to Long Beach
I-5
Here are some pics from our quick-trip to Sacramento, taken on the southbound return to Long Beach.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and cooler than seasonal.
Court Extends Jail Time
Pussy Riot
A group of feminist punk rockers must remain behind bars as police investigate them for chanting a "punk prayer" against Russian President Vladimir Putin from a church pulpit, a court ruled Wednesday. The decision angered the band's supporters and drew condemnation from a top German human rights official.
Five members of Pussy Riot - wearing brightly colored homemade ski masks and miniskirts - briefly seized the pulpit of Moscow's main Orthodox church, the Christ the Savior Cathedral, in February and chanted "Mother Mary, drive Putin away."
Three band members - Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23, Maria Alekhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29 - were arrested and face up to seven years in jail on hooliganism charges.
An investigator petitioned to keep them in prison while the police probe continues, and on Wednesday, a Tagansky district court judge ruled the three will remain held until July 24.
Outside the court building, police detained about 20 people as dozens of the band's supporters whistled in unison, chanted anti-Kremlin slogans and clashed with Orthodox activists who called on the band members "to repent."
Pussy Riot
Thanks Hairy Cornflake
Aung San Suu Kyi
Veteran British DJ Dave Lee Travis said he was "astonished" that his radio show aired on the BBC World Service provided comfort to Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi during her many years in captivity.
Suu Kyi had previously singled out Travis' music request program "A Jolly Good Show" for making her "world much more complete" while she was held under house arrest for a total of 15 years between 1989 and 2010.
"She is just an excellent icon for the age and that is why it becomes more and more surprising to me that a DJ, whose job is to play music, have fun, jolly things along a bit, should have been a part, almost a cure for her loneliness there."
Asked how he felt when he learned that Suu Kyi, an international symbol of peaceful protest and sacrifice, had been a fan for so long, he replied:
"But still you don't expect to have world leaders, people of that stature, not only just listening to the program but actually finding solace in it," the 67-year-old nicknamed the "Hairy Cornflake" told Reuters in an interview.
Aung San Suu Kyi
Helps Students Get Instruments
Barry Manilow
Some Michigan school students will have Barry Manilow to thank for their musical instruments.
MLive.com reports that the entertainer launched an instrument drive for Grand Rapids schools, offering two free tickets to his show there last week to anyone who donated new or gently used instruments. He kicked off the effort by donating a piano. At last count, 25 instruments were donated.
The Manilow Music Project provides musical instruments to high schools and middle schools and music scholarships to universities.
Barry Manilow
Ends "Life in Hell" After 30 Years
Matt Groening
For more than 30 years, "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening sketched the syndicated comic strip "Life in Hell," a long-time staple of alternative newsweeklies like LA Weekly and the Village Voice.
But, as the cartoon's revenue stream dried up in the wake of newspaper budget cuts, so too did Groening's ink. The final "Life in Hell" strip, the cartoonist's 1,669th, was published Friday.
"I've had great fun, in a Sisyphean kind of way, but the time has come to let Binky and Sheba and Bongo and Akbar and Jeff take some time off," Groening told Poynter in an email Wednesday.
"Life in Hell" was known not just for its characters - including anthropomorphic rabbits and a pair of gay lovers - but for helping a whole new generation of cartoonists to break into larger markets by licensing to the popular and widely distributed newsweeklies in major cities.
But as budget woes plague former syndicators like LA Weekly, which dropped the strip in 2009, the comic appears to have become more work than it was worth - it earned around $18 per publication.
Matt Groening
Gay Marriage Backlash
Carrie Underwood
Carrie Underwood wants to be a musician, not a politician.
The American country music star is dealing with a backlash, however, after telling British newspaper The Independent that she supported gay marriage.
Underwood added that her church was gay-friendly and it wasn't her job to judge people - comments that ignited online anger against her from those against gay marriage.
Underwood says "no matter what happens in your life, something you do, wear, say, sing whatever - somebody somewhere is probably not going to like it too well."
Carrie Underwood
Wedding News
Judd - Moser
Country singer Wynonna Judd has tied the knot.
Her publicist, Todd Brodginski, confirms that she married drummer Cactus Moser in a private family ceremony on Sunday. The wedding took place in Leipers Fork, Tenn.
This is the third marriage for 48-year-old Judd. The couple had been dating since 2009. Judd divorced her second husband, D.R. Roach in 2007 after four years together. She has two children with her first husband, Arch Kelly III.
Judd - Moser
Wedding News
Etheridge - Brown
American singer Bobby Brown has remarried in Hawaii, four months after the drowning death of his ex-wife Whitney Houston, People magazine reported on Tuesday.
Photos of Brown, 43, a member of the New Edition band, his new wife and manager, Alicia Etheridge, and their wedding party were posted on Instagram by the singer's teenage son, Bobby Jr.
People magazine said the couple tied the knot on Monday, a day after Brown performed a New Edition concert in Honolulu.
Brown has five children, one with Houston, three from previous relationships, and one with Etheridge.
Etheridge - Brown
Instructor Suspended Over Course
Joint Forces Staff College
An instructor who provoked debate in his classroom of military officers by suggesting the United States was at war with Islam has been relieved of teaching duties at a military college and the course ordered redesigned, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.
The course at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, part of the U.S. National Defense University, had been offered since 2004, according to Colonel David Lapan, spokesman for the chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Lapan said "institutional failures in oversight and judgment" resulted in changes to the content about two years ago that resulted in inappropriate materials being introduced.
The instructor was a U.S. military officer. Lapan declined to identify the instructor by name, citing privacy requirements.
Lapan said an inquiry found the initial course content in 2004 was fine but "over time bad decisions and poor judgment was exercised in how the course was modified."
Joint Forces Staff College
Sues DMV
Ashton Kutcher
Ashton Kutcher's production company is suing because it isn't being allowed to spend more time at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Katalyst Media Inc.'s breach of contract lawsuit accuses the California DMV of reneging on a deal to film a reality series focused on the much-maligned government agency and its customers.
The company produced Kutcher's show "Punk'd" and some of the actor's other projects and claims it is owed more than $1.4 million on the deal.
It states the DMV backed out of the reality show on claims it was no longer in the agency's best interests, but it had already been promised to the TruTV channel.
Ashton Kutcher
On Way Out
Ann Curry
Only a year after becoming Matt Lauer's co-host on NBC's "Today" show, Ann Curry may soon be losing that job.
A source with knowledge of the show who spoke on condition of anonymity said Wednesday that NBC is discussing a plan to ease Curry out of the co-hosting role. The New York Times first reported these discussions on Wednesday.
Savannah Guthrie, who co-hosts the show's third hour, is at the top of the list of Curry's possible replacements. NBC News President Steve Capus and the show's executive producer, Jim Bell, did not immediately return a request for comment.
"Today" lost in the ratings this spring for the first time since 1995 after a string of 852 consecutive weeks. Since then, "Today" and ABC's "Good Morning America" have been trading wins.
Ann Curry
Hot Dogs Questioned
Hebrew National
ConAgra Foods Inc has been sued by consumers who contend that hot dogs and other products sold under its Hebrew National brand are not kosher.
The lawsuit alleges that meat processing services provided to ConAgra by privately held AER Services Inc fell short of the standards necessary to label Hebrew National products as kosher. As a result, they said, ConAgra misled consumers and was able to charge premium prices.
Eleven individual consumers filed their complaint in May in Minnesota state court. ConAgra moved the case this month to a federal court in St. Paul. The lawsuit was reported last week by American Jewish World, a publication based in Minnesota.
According to the complaint, Omaha, Nebraska-based ConAgra marks Hebrew National packages with a "Triangle K" symbol, and represents that the contents are kosher "as defined by the most stringent Jews who follow Orthodox Jewish law."
But the plaintiffs said in the complaint that AER supervisors "did little or nothing" to address employee complaints that the meat processed for ConAgra was non-kosher. They also said Skokie, Illinois-based AER fired or threatened retaliation against those who complained.
Hebrew National
Returning Ancient Water Jug
Toledo Museum of Art
The Toledo Museum of Art says it will return an ancient water jug to Italy that investigators believe was probably illegally dug up from that country years ago.
The 2,500-year-old water vessel, or kalpis, has been on display at the Ohio museum since 1982, when it was purchased from an antiquities dealer out of Switzerland. It will be displayed in the museum's Libbey Court until it leaves for Rome, probably in late summer.
Authorities believe the 20-inch artifact was probably illegally excavated in Italy, smuggled to Switzerland and given a forged record of ownership. To clear the way for its return to Italy, federal prosecutors filed a complaint Wednesday in U.S. District Court asking a judge to order the jug forfeited.
Last year, a mermaid holding a candy dish, the Nereid Sweetmeat Stand, was returned by the Toledo museum to the Dresden Museum in Germany. Made in the mid-1700s, it had been stolen during World War II. New X-rays of the porcelain piece showed fine cracks that matched photographs taken in the 1930s when it was still in Germany.
Toledo Museum of Art
Polish Museum
Chicago
Stolen documents, military medals and other artifacts valued at about $5 million - including letters signed by Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson - were returned Wednesday to Chicago's Polish Museum after being found in the basement of a home decades after they went missing.
The more than 120 items, which were returned following an FBI investigation, include letters and documents dating to the 18th and 19th centuries, seals, military medals and Nazi propaganda from World War II. The pieces also included documentation about Napoleon, George Washington, John Adams and American Revolution hero Thaddeus Kosciuszko.
Officials said Chicago coin and antiques dealer Harlan Berk notified the museum last October that his office had purchased historic items it had traced to the institution. The museum contacted the FBI, which started an investigation.
Berk told the FBI that the sellers said they found the artifacts in the basement of a Chicago house where they were tenants. FBI Art Crime Team investigators found that the residence was owned by the mother of a former Polish museum curator. The FBI recovered additional artifacts and documents from the home.
No charges were filed because the FBI couldn't determine who took the items from the museum or exactly when they were taken. The statute of limitations in the case also had run out.
Chicago
Brothers Prepare To Tour
Michael Jackson
Guided by a thumping bass line from their backing band, the Jackson brothers strut forward to a row of four microphones, thrusting their pelvises along the way, before launching into "Can't Let Her Get Away," a song their superstar sibling released on his "Dangerous" album. If they had afros and matching powder blue suits, it might feel like 1977 again.
It doesn't. They're casually sporting sunglasses, workout gear and a few more pounds than when they, along with the future King of Pop, were simply known as the Jackson 5. (Also, "Can't Let Her Get Away" was released in 1991 after the group fizzled out.)
Nearly three years since Michael died while preparing for his comeback tour, four of his brothers - Marlon, Jermaine, Tito and Jackie - are set for their own return to the stage as The Jacksons. It hasn't been easy.
The brothers are launching their "Unity" tour on Wednesday, five days ahead of the third anniversary of Michael's death from an overdose of the anesthetic propofol on June 25, 2009.
Michael Jackson
Ad Sales Are Flat
Network TV
Television's biggest selling season for ads has ended for the Big 5 networks with neither a bang nor a whimper: Cursed to coincide with disappointing economic news, their upfronts sales roughly equaled last year's take of $9.2 billion.
While cable is in the midst of its upfront sales, the networks finished last week. CBS, ABC and NBCearned slightly more than they did last year, according to people familiar with the sales. Fox and the CW were essentially flat.
Still, steady sales may feel like good news considering their backdrop: Networks had to sell their fall shows amid rampant economic uncertainty - and with General Motors, a major advertiser, aggressively haggling over prices.
Cable networks are expected to out-earn the networks - as they did last year - when they complete their sales in the next two weeks.
Network TV
Roulette Wheel Hits 19 Seven Straight Times
Las Vegas
A photo taken by a professional gambler in Las Vegas purports to show a roulette wheel hitting the number 19 seven times in a row. And as the Las Vegas Sun notes, the odds of striking such a remarkable set are an astounding 3 billion to 1.
The sequence reportedly occurred at 8:32 p.m. on Monday at the Rio Casino when professional poker player Jeff Romano captured the image on his phone's camera and uploaded it to Twitter. In a subsequent tweet, Romano responded to inquiring readers by noting he was "just passing by" the roulette table when he spotted the numbers.
After hitting 19 for the seventh time in a row, the wheel landed on the number 15 for the eighth spin. But the wheel then hit 19 one more time on its ninth spin.
Caesars Entertainment tells the Sun that it was unaware of the alleged string of numbers until contacted by the paper.
The paper has not yet been able to verify the accuracy of the event, including questions about whether it could have occurred if the roulette wheel was not properly aligned. But if true, the Sun notes this would be "one of the rarest documented roulette runs in the city's history."
Las Vegas
In Memory
Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris, a leading movie critic during a golden age for reviewers who popularized the French reverence for directors and inspired debate about countless films and filmmakers, died Wednesday. He was 83.
Sarris died at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan after complications developed from a stomach virus, according to his wife, film critic Molly Haskell.
Sarris was best known for his work with the Village Voice, his opinions especially vital during the 1960s and 1970s, when movies became films, or even cinema, and critics and fans argued about them the way they once might have contended over paintings or novels.
No longer was the big screen just entertainment. Thanks to film studies courses and revival houses, movies were analyzed in classrooms and in cafes. Audiences discovered such foreign directors as Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman, rediscovered older works by Howard Hawks, John Ford and others from Hollywood, and welcomed new favorites such as Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese.
Filmmakers were heroes and critics were sages, including Sarris, Pauline Kael, Stanley Kauffmann and Manny Farber.
Sarris started with the Voice in 1960 and established himself as a major reviewer in 1962 with the essay "Notes on the Auteur Theory." Acknowledging the influence of French critics and even previous American writers, Sarris argued for the primacy of directors and called the "ultimate glory" of movies "the tension between a director's personality and his material."
He not only helped write the rules, but filled in the names. He was a pioneer of the annual "Top 10" film lists that remain fixtures in the media. In 1968, he published "The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968," what Sarris described as "a collection of facts, a reminder of movies to be resurrected, of genres to be redeemed, of directors to be rediscovered." Among his favorites: Ford, Hawks, Orson Welles and Fritz Lang. Categorized as "Less Than Meets the Eye": John Huston, David Lean, Elia Kazan and Fred Zinnemann.
Sarris was a heavyset and sad-eyed man, a deeply knowledgeable, elegiac critic with a notable willingness to admit error. He dismissed Billy Wilder in 1968 as being "too cynical to believe even his own cynicism," then years later (with a nudge from Francois Truffaut) said he was wrong. After initially panning Stanley Kubrick's "2001: Space Odyssey," he gave the 1968 film another try - under different circumstances - in 1970.
"I must report that I recently paid another visit to Stanley Kubrick's '2001' while under the influence of a smoked substance that I was assured by my contact was somewhat stronger and more authentic than oregano on a King Sano (cigarette) base," he confided.
"Anyway, I prepared to watch '2001' under what I have always been assured were optimum conditions, and surprisingly (for me) I find myself reversing my original opinion. '2001' is indeed a major work by a major artist."
Sarris was born in Brooklyn in 1928, the son of a real estate investor who lost much of his fortune during the Great Depression. (Always broke, but never poor, was how Sarris remembered his childhood.)
He called himself a "middle-class cultural guerrilla," an arsenal of ideas and emotions. "Novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poems slithered off my typewriter in haphazard spasms of abortive creation," he later wrote.
By the mid-1950s, he was absorbing the writings of the influential French journal Cahiers du Cinema, where contributors included such future directors as Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Eric Rohmer. In 1960, he became the Village Voice's film critic, starting with a review of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," which he praised for "making previous horror films look like variations of 'Pollyanna.'"
Sarris left the Voice in 1989 to write for the New York Observer, where he remained until he was laid off in 2009. In 2000, Sarris was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for criticism and in 2012 received a $10,000 prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for "progressive, original, and experimental" criticism. He was also a founding member of the National Society of Film Critics, wrote screenplays for the films "A Promise at Dawn" and "Justine" and worked as a story consultant for 20th Century Fox from 1955-65.
He was a longtime professor of film at Columbia University, and also taught at New York University and Yale University. His other books included "Politics and Cinema" and "The Primal Screen."
Andrew Sarris
In Memory
Richard Lynch
An actor who employed his scarred face to play villainous characters in such films as "Bad Dreams" and "The Sword and the Sorcerer" has died. Richard Lynch was 76.
His representative, Mike Baronas, says Lynch was found dead Tuesday at his home in Palm Springs, Calif. No other details were provided.
The actor appeared in several horror and sci-fi films in a career spanning four decades. He recently played serial killer Michael Myers' principal in director Rob Zombie's "Halloween" remake in 2007. His most recent role is in Zombie's upcoming film "The Lords of Salem." Other movies included "Scarecrow" and "Little Nikita." He appeared in such TV series as "Battlestar Galactica," ''The A-Team" and "Six Feet Under."
Lynch reportedly suffered scarring in 1967 after accidentally setting himself on fire while under the influence of LSD.
Richard Lynch
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