Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Mark Morford: The rise of hugely insufferable women (sfgate.com)
Not all grown men are suave, sexy, progressive George Clooney/Viggo Mortensen/Colin Farrell lookalikes with sharp blue eyes, stubbly outgrowths and abs like World Cup forwards, all hearts of gold, full heads of hair and perfectly sculpted genitalia custom designed to satisfy a small harem, make birds sing and goddesses purr.
Susan Estrich: The Opportunity in Afghanistan (creators.com)
During the most difficult days of the Mondale-Ferraro campaign in 1984, someone printed up a button that said: "There are no problems. Only opportunities."
Froma Harrop: Electrify the Roads (creators.com)
My magic wand is on the fritz, otherwise we'd have a big, new federal program to free America from its dependence on oil. Like other environmentalists, I'm sad that the calamity in the Gulf of Mexico hasn't spurred Washington to more vigorously promote America's exit from this curse.
"The Second Sex" by Simone de Beauvoir: A review by Kristana Arp
A new translation of Simone de Beauvoir's magnum opus has appeared at last. The first English edition was published almost 60 years ago, its translator H. M. Parshley, a retired Smith College zoology professor who lacked a background in philosophy and French literature and who mistranslated key terms, obscuring the work's deeper intellectual dimensions. Responding to the publisher's demands, he also cut about 15 percent of the French original.
David Keeps: Fun with famous authors (latimes.com)
'Celebrity Autobiography,' created by Eugene Pack, entertains onstage with readings from books by well-known folk. It's returning to the L.A. area.
"The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today" by Ted Conover: A review by Steven Lagerfeld
When I traveled to the struggling ski-resort town of Davis, West Virginia, this past winter, all the locals I met seemed to want to know how I had gotten there. They talked about the highway that has been inching their way for years. Most looked forward to the flood of tourists and prosperity they thought the project would bring, but others saw only the prospect of unwelcome change.
Frankie and the Heartstrings: 'Music needs a bit o' spite' (guardian.co.uk)
Frankie and the Heartstrings are the current flag-fliers for the surprisingly fertile Sunderland scene. They tell Dave Simpson how kitchen-sink dramas and the miners' strike are still alive in their music.
Rosanna Greenstreet: "Q&A: Charlotte Gainsbourg" (guardian.co.uk)
'I fell on my head when waterskiing. I didn't realise at the time what the accident did.'
Peter Conrad : "John Adams: 'I just don't know what to say about American classical music'" (guardian.co.uk)
As his 'songplay' inspired by West Side Story opens in London's East End, John Adams reviews his own progress with satisfaction - and describes his latest piece as a 'corrupt file.'
Laura Barnett: "Fiona Banner: fight and flight" (guardian.co.uk)
She has filmed a helicopter ballet, melted a jet - and caused a storm by transcribing a porn epic. Will Fiona Banner's latest work go further?
Elaine Lipworth: "Jeff Bridges: My family values" (guardian.co.uk)
The Hollywood actor talks about his family.
Paul Constant: "Best Worst Movie: A Documentary About the Best Worst Film Ever, 'Troll 2'" (thestranger.com)
Somewhere around the release of 'Anvil! The Story of Anvil,' I started to get really tired of documentaries about failures. There have been some classics in the genre-'Audience of One,' 'American Movie,' 'Heavy Metal in Baghdad'-but at some point, it stops feeling like a spontaneous discovery of failure and more of a metaquest about a documentary filmmaker looking for an idiot to mock.
The Weekly Poll
Summer Sabbatical
I've decided to take a short 'sabbatical' from the Poll thing for some R&R (fishing, easy hiking, campfires... that sort of thing) and spend some time contemplating the errors of my ways, haha... You might see, from time to time, trivia responses and the odd article or picture from me. I have a laptop and an 'air-card' so if I can get a cell signal, I can access the web. Do not despair though (yeah, right!)... I'm like a bad penny. I'll turn up again...
As always, Yer the Best!
BadToTheBoneBob
wrote:
replied:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and pleasant.
The great bathroom ordeal of 2010 is now a thing of the past.
Hired By CNN
Eliot Spitzer
CNN says it's hiring former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and conservative columnist Kathleen Parker to co-host a round-table talk show for its struggling prime-time lineup.
In recent months, Spitzer has been increasingly visible on cable-news programs, leading to speculation he would land a permanent job on the air.
His new program, set to air at 8 p.m. EDT weeknights starting this fall, recalls CNN's old "Crossfire" debate show.
Eliot Spitzer
Organizers Ponder Changes
Oscars
Academy Awards organizers are talking about moving up the date of the show, possibly as early as January.
At a Tuesday meeting, the academy's board of governors discussed the idea of holding the Oscars earlier. Most recent shows have been held in late February.
A statement Wednesday by the academy said the earliest any date change could take effect would be for the Oscars in 2012. A firm date of Feb. 27 already has been set for next year's 83rd Oscars.
For many years, the Oscars were held in late March but were moved to February in 2004 to shorten what many in Hollywood considered a prolonged awards season.
Oscars
Newest Additions
National Recording Registry
Rapper Tupac Shakur's song "Dear Mama," Bill Cosby's second comedy album and rare battle sounds from World War II are among 25 recordings the Library of Congress is preserving for their cultural significance.
Selections for the 2009 National Recording Registry are being announced Wednesday. They must be at least 10 years old and be culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.
The new additions include performances by Little Richard, Willie Nelson, REM, Patti Smith and the 1923 recording "Canal Street Blues" by King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band for epitomizing the sound of New Orleans.
For the complete list - National Recording Registry
Guesting On 'Army Wives'
Jill Biden
Lifetime network's "Army Wives" is set to welcome the wife of Vice President Joe Biden in a future episode.
The network announced Wednesday that Jill Biden will make a guest appearance on the military drama to raise awareness of the contributions by U.S. men and women in uniform as well as their families.
She will appear as herself in the episode, titled "Mud, Sweat and Tears." She visits the show's Fort Marshall to kick off the annual Fun Run, and while there meets with military spouses. A number of real Army wives will be featured in the episode, which is scheduled to air Aug. 15.
Jill Biden
Concert Tickets Gone; eBay Bans Sale
Jimmy Buffett
Tickets to Jimmy Buffett's free concert in Alabama to show support for the oil spill-stricken Gulf Coast have been grabbed up quickly and begun showing up for sale on eBay for more than $100 each.
That prompted eBay officials to release a statement Wednesday saying they would not allow the tickets to be sold on their site.
Alabama Gov. Bob Riley and Gulf Coast residents were among those complaining after the 35,000 free tickets were taken in a matter of minutes Wednesday morning and then began showing up for sale by apparent scalpers.
Buffett and other stars will perform in Gulf Shores to support residents and businesses hurt by the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that has fouled the water and beaches.
Jimmy Buffett
CMT To Air Concert
Jimmy Buffett
The CMT cable network said this week it will air a portion of the July 1 concert live from 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Eastern. The concert on the beach is being billed as "CMT Presents Jimmy Buffett & Friends Live From the Gulf Coast."
Jimmy BuffettBuffett will be joined by Kenny Chesney, Zac Brown, Allen Toussaint, Jesse Winchester and other guests.
Jimmy BuffettThe performance also will be simulcast on Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio, and streamed on the CTM website.
Jimmy Buffett
Cousin Vlad
Robert Pattinson
Robert Pattinson isn't the only famous vampire in his family.
Genealogists say the 24-year-old "Twilight" star is related to Vlad the Impaler, widely cited as the inspiration for the main character in Bram Stoker's "Dracula."
Researchers at Ancestry.com discovered that Pattinson and the Transylvanian leader (real name: Vlad III Dracula) are connected through their relationship to the British royal family. Prince William and Prince Harry are Pattinson's distant cousins; Vlad the Impaler was their distant uncle.
Also connected to the prince's lineage and therefore to Dracula? Stephenie Meyer, the author of the "Twilight" series.
Robert Pattinson
Hospital News
Gregg Allman
Rock 'n' roll Hall of Famer Gregg Allman underwent a successful liver transplant surgery Wednesday morning at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla.
Allman's manager Michael Lehman told The Associated Press in a phone interview that Allman was groggy but awake Wednesday morning and that the co-founder of the seminal Southern rock group The Allman Brothers Band could be sitting up and on his feet by nightfall.
Allman began treatment for Hepatitis C in 2007 but chronic damage to his liver led to the transplant. He had been on the waiting list until doctors found a suitable liver.
Doctors told him to expect to be in the hospital for up to a week, stay in the Jacksonville area for up to three weeks and possibly be back on the road by November, Lehman said. Doctors said he should be able to participate in the wedding of his daughter, Island, on July 26, he added.
Gregg Allman
Former Manager Sues
Joan Rivers
Joan Rivers' former manager has sued the popular comedian for more than $2 million claiming she failed to pay him commissions and defamed him in a recent documentary film about her life and career.
In the lawsuit, William "Billy" Sammeth said he began working for Rivers in 2002 as a personal manager, guiding her career at a time when it was "dormant" and overseeing Rivers' day-to-day business affairs, among other duties.
The ex-manager believes he was instrumental in helping Rivers win TV show contest "Celebrity Apprentice," and he said he worked for Rivers during the filming of the documentary "Joan Rivers -- A Piece of Work" before being fired solely to give the movie "a fictional controversy."
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, includes a list of Rivers' work for which Sammeth thinks he is owed a 10 percent commission as manager.
Joan Rivers
$1B Viacom Lawsuit
Google
A federal judge in New York sided with Google Inc. in a $1 billion copyright lawsuit filed by media company Viacom Inc. over YouTube videos, saying the service promptly removed illegal materials as required under federal law.
Wednesday's ruling by U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton in the closely watched case further affirmed the protections offered to online service providers under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The 1998 law offers immunity when service providers promptly remove illegal materials submitted by users once they are notified of a violation.
That safe harbor had helped persuade Google to buy YouTube for $1.76 billion in 2006, even though some of its own executives had earlier branded the video-sharing service as "a 'rogue enabler' of content theft," according to internal documents unearthed in the case.
Although it's a major victory for Google and other Internet service providers, Wednesday's decision won't end a legal brawl that has already dragged on for more than three years. Viacom vowed to keep the case alive in appeals court, a process likely to last another year or two.
Google
Apologizes To New Mexico Neighbors
Val Kilmer
Actor Val Kilmer has apologized to his northern New Mexico neighbors after he was quoted making disparaging comments about the community.
San Miguel County commissioners invited Kilmer to a meeting Wednesday to explain comments published years ago in Rolling Stone and Esquire magazines.
Kilmer says he shares residents' concerns "when you hear negative things about a place you love."
After hearing from Kilmer and those upset by his remarks, commissioners approved a permit that will let him rent guest houses at his ranch.
Val Kilmer
Settling Down
Prince Albert
Prince Albert is giving Monaco a new princess.
The boyish if balding monarch is ditching decades of eligible bachelorhood, and is now engaged to South African ex-swimming champion Charlene Wittstock. Albert's betrothed has iconic shoes to fill, stepping into a role vacant since the much-beloved Princess Grace died in a car crash in 1982.
Royal watchers are ecstatic at Wednesday's palace announcement, and they're wondering: Is the bespectacled playboy prince manning up? And most importantly, will the 52-year-old Albert finally produce a legitimate heir?
Albert acknowledged in 2005 that he had fathered a boy, Alexandre, with a former flight attendant. The following year, he acknowledged an American daughter, Jazmin Grace Grimaldi, now a teenager, born to a California woman. Neither can assume the throne because they were born out of wedlock.
Prince Albert
Whaling Effort Collapses
Japan
An international effort to truly limit whale hunting collapsed Wednesday, leaving Japan, Norway and Iceland free to keep killing hundreds of mammals a year, even raiding a marine sanctuary in Antarctic waters unchecked.
The breakdown put diplomatic efforts on ice for at least a year, raised the possibility that South Korea might join the whaling nations and raised questions about the global drive to prevent the extinction of the most endangered whale species.
It also revived doubts about the effectiveness and future of the International Whaling Commission. The agency was created after World War II to oversee the hunting of tens of thousands of whales a year but gradually evolved into a body at least partly dedicated to keeping whales from vanishing from the Earth's oceans.
Several whale species have been hunted to near extinction, gradually recovering since the ban on commercial whaling went into effect in 1986, while other species like the smaller minke whale are still abundant. But the whale arouses deep passions around the world, because it was one of the first icons of the animal conservation movement, starting with the popular Save The Whale campaign of the 1970s.
Japan
Lackluster Bidding For Archive
John Steinbeck
An auction of a trove of author John Steinbeck's letters, manuscripts and photographs from his New York City apartment produced lackluster bidding on Wednesday, with half of the items failing to sell or fetching prices below their pre-sale estimates.
The "Grapes of Wrath" author's archive brought a total of $73,950 at Bloomsbury Auction. The auctioneer had predicted that the material would bring $200,000 to $250,000.
Among the highlights that did not sell was Steinbeck's acceptance speech for his 1962 Nobel Prize for Literature. It was one of 26 lots - out of 50 - that failed to find a buyer, the auctioneer said.
The Bloomsbury material dated from the early 1940s until his death and was being sold by Elaine Steinbeck's heirs, the auction house said.
John Steinbeck
Group Seeks Endangered Listing
Franklin's Bumblebee
A conservation group filed a petition Wednesday to add a bumblebee from Southern Oregon and Northern California to the endangered species list.
The Society for Invertebrate Conservation and University of California at Davis entomologist Robbin Thorp formally petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the insect - called a Franklin's bumblebee - under the Endangered Species Act.
Scott Hoffman Black, executive director of the of the Xerces Society in Portland, said the petition is part of an effort to reverse the decline of bumblebees and other native bees around the world due to habitat loss, pesticides and diseases spilling out of commercial greenhouses.
The group is preparing petitions to protect other bumblebee species as well. The Franklin's bee was chosen for this petition because documentation of its decline is more detailed than for other species. Thorp found 94 Franklin's bumblebees in 1994, but he has seen none since 2006.
Franklin's Bumblebee
Hitler Auction
Fürth
An imprisoned and impoverished Adolf Hitler wrote to a car dealer begging for a discount on a Mercedes he had his eye on, according to a letter being auctioned in Germany next month.
The letter, excerpts from which were published in the Bild mass circulation daily Wednesday, dates from September 1924, when Hitler was languishing in Landsberg prison after the abortive Munich beer hall putsch.
He said he needed the dealer to knock "a couple of thousand marks" off the price of the grey 11/40 Benz (later Mercedes-Benz) model he was interested in as he was waiting for the proceeds from his book "Mein Kampf".
The Behringer auction house in Fürth, southern Germany, said on its website that it was selling the letter, along with more than 500 "paper objects" from Hitler's spell in prison, on July 2-3.
Fürth
Humor Impaired
Pork Board
It's official: The National Pork Board says it knows unicorns don't exist.
The industry group says it was only protecting its trademark when it issued cease-and-desist warning to online retailer ThinkGeek for calling a fake unicorn meat product "the new white meat."
The fictional canned meat, described as an "excellent source of sparkles," was an April Fool's prank. But the 12-page letter from the board's law firm was no joke.
In a public apology this week, ThinkGeek said its nonexistent canned unicorn meat is sparkly, a bit red and not approved by any government entity.
Pork Board
Cable Nielsens
Ratings
Rankings for the top 15 programs on cable networks as compiled by the Nielsen Co. for the week of June 14-20. Day and start time (EDT) are in parentheses:
1. "Pawn Stars" (Monday, 10:30 p.m.), History, 4.26 million homes, 5.9 million viewers.
2. "Royal Pains" (Thursday, 10 p.m.), USA, 3.92 million homes, 5.51 million viewers.
3. "Pawn Stars" (Monday, 10 p.m.), History, 3.81 million homes, 5.29 million viewers.
4. "Burn Notice" (Thursday, 9 p.m.), USA, 3.75 million homes, 5.3 million viewers.
5. "Hot in Cleveland" (Wednesday, 10 p.m.), TV Land, 3.62 million homes, 4.75 million viewers.
6. World Cup Soccer: Slovenia vs. United States (Friday, 9:25 p.m.), ESPN, 3.55 million homes, 4.68 million viewers.
7. "WWE Raw" (Monday, 10 p.m.), USA, 3.47 million homes, 4.97 million viewers.
8. "WWE Raw" (Monday, 9 p.m.), USA, 3.33 million homes, 4.79 million viewers.
9. "NCIS" (Wednesday, 9 p.m.), USA, 3.27 million homes, 4.43 million viewers.
10. Auto Racing: Sprint Cup/Sonoma (Sunday, 3 p.m.), TNT, 3.09 million homes, 4.47 million viewers.
11. "American Pickers" (Monday, 9 p.m.), History, 3.05 million homes, 4.3 million viewers.
12. "In Plain Sight" (Wednesday, 10 p.m.), USA, 3.03 million homes, 4.14 million viewers.
13. "NCIS" (Monday, 8 p.m.), USA, 3 million homes, 3.92 million viewers.
14. "NCIS" (Wednesday, 8 p.m.), USA, 2.97 million homes, 3.99 million viewers.
15. "The O'Reilly Factor" (Tuesday, 8:24 p.m.), Fox News Channel, 2.79 million homes, 3.66 million viewers.
Ratings
In Memory
Tracy Wright
Toronto actress Tracy Wright, who frequently collaborated with husband Don McKellar on films including "Monkey Warfare," "Highway 61," and the upcoming concert film, "This Movie is Broken," has died. She was 50.
Friend and collaborator Reg Harkema says she had been battling pancreatic cancer and took a sudden turn for the worse about a month ago.
Although mostly known for smaller roles, Wright's list of diverse credits in film, television and theatre established her as a fixture on the indie scene.
Her 20-year career included appearances in more than 35 films and TV shows, as she worked with luminaries such as Bruce McDonald and playwright Daniel MacIvor.
Upcoming projects were to include the title role in a reading of Bertolt Brecht's "Life Of Galileo" and as an alt-rock-band survivor in McDonald's film, "Trigger."
Wright is survived by McKellar, her father Colin Wright, her brother Paul, sisters Gloria and Stephanie, parents- in-law John and Kay McKellar and their families.
Tracy Wright
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