Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: The Competition Myth (New York Times)
It's a misdiagnosis to say that America's economic problem is a lack of competitiveness.
Frank Rich: The One-Eyed Man is King (New York Times)
"True Grit" has unalloyed faith in values antithetical to those of the 21st century America so deftly skewered in "The Social Network."
Clarence Page: It couldn't hurt to have a Muslim 'Cosby Show' (Chicago Tribune)
CBS anchor Katie Couric startled some listeners when she suggested a Muslim "Cosby Show," but the idea actually has merit. It's hard to be afraid of the people we see on TV sitcoms every week.
The Saturday interview: Patti Smith (Guardian)
Patti Smith became a rock star by accident - it made her an icon. She wrote a book - it won a major award. Now, with an album on the way and a UK tour, she's as driven as ever. Aida Edemariam meets her.
"Just Kids" by Patti Smith: A review by Gerry Donaghy
Smith has always been a gifted wordsmith, and while her lyrics and poetry resonate with the personal and confessional, 'Just Kids' probably does more to situate the artist and her relationship to the world than anything she's previously done. Stripped of both the intensity that accompanies her music, and the metaphor and mysticism of her poetry, Smith's writings here are still vividly observant and sometimes painfully self-aware, but now they possess a voice not only of yearning but also of experience.
How To Write a (Good) Sentence (Slate)
Adam Haslett on Stanley Fish.
Roger Ebert: Review of "Company Men"
Although the actors are convincing and the film well-crafted, "The Company Men" delivers few satisfactory character portraits because the movie isn't really about characters, it's about economic units. When a corporation fires you, it doesn't much care whether you're a good friend, a loving father, a louse or a liar. You are an investment it carries on its books, or not. The movie's impact comes when these people realize it doesn't matter in economic terms who they are.
Andy Webster: Review of "Lemmy" (New York Times)
In the worlds of hard rock and heavy metal, Ian Fraser Kilmister, the singer, bassist and central piston behind the band Motörhead, is not only a musical influence but also a paragon of hard living, like Keith Richards, only without the pretty-boy band mate, Top 40 hits and hippie associations.
George Varga: From the Mouths of Stars: They Said it -- in 2010 -- And They Stand by it (Creators Syndicate)
"I'd like to be remembered as a guy who gave people a lot of smiles. I'll be remembered as the guy who bit the heads off several creatures, but I suppose that's what I have to expect." - Ozzy Osbourne ponders his legacy.
Lee Hawkins: Lady Gaga's Manager on Her New Album and Coming Deals (Wall Street Journal)
"She's overachieved on this new album," Carter said. "You never know what to expect in terms of where an artist is going to go after they've had as much success as she's had." "It has a certain level of soulfulness to it," he said. "I'm looking forward to seeing the public's reaction to it."
Nick Cristiano: Lyle Lovett is back on the road with fellow troubadour John Hiatt (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Since his self-titled debut album in 1986, Lyle Lovett has established himself as a distinctive voice in American music - a lanky Texan with a mischievous grin who follows in the Lone Star tradition of stubbornly individualistic talents, from Bob Wills to Willie Nelson, Delbert McClinton to Guy Clark.
David Bruce has 39 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $39 you can buy 9,750 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," and "Maximum Cool."
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From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and seasonal.
Oscar nominations today.
Says Career Not Dead
Keith Olbermann
Former MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann, who abruptly left his top-rated show at the U.S. cable news network last week, said on Monday that "reports of the death of my career are greatly exaggerated."
In his first comments since his departure, the liberal broadcaster, who often butted heads with MSNBC management, took to Twitter to share his thoughts with fans.
"My humble thanks to all Friends of Keith for the many kind words," he wrote on the social network, before paraphrasing a quote from Mark Twain. "The reports of the death of my career are greatly exaggerated."
It was not immediately clear how Olbermann planned to revive his career. He had two years left on his contract, when he signed off for the last time on his "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" political affairs program on Friday.
Keith Olbermann
31st Annual Announcement
Razzie Awards
If films starring Jennifer Aniston, Ashton Kutcher and the lovelorn cast of "Twilight" left you dumbfounded, you're officially in good company.
All are prominent contenders for the Razzie Awards, an annual competition honoring Hollywood's worst movies, actors and filmmakers, its organizer said on Monday.
Now in their 31st year, the Razzies are run by California movie buff John Wilson's Golden Raspberry Foundation as an antidote to the self-congratulatory seriousness that engulfs Hollywood during Oscar season.
The winners, determined by 600-plus voters, will be announced during a Hollywood ceremony on February 26, the day before the Oscars are handed out. Not surprisingly, most honorees do not attend. Notable exceptions included Sandra Bullock last year for "All About Steve," and Halle Berry in 2005 for "Catwoman." Bullock went on to win an Oscar the next day, but for a different film.
Razzie Awards
Complete List of Razzie Awards Nominations
National Anthem At Super Bowl
Christina Aguilera
Christina Aguilera will sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl in Texas on Feb. 6.
The five-time Grammy award winning singer will be making an encore at the NFL championship. She was part of the halftime show during the 2000 Super Bowl.
The previously announced halftime show will feature The Black Eyed Peas.
Christina Aguilera
Northwestern Commencement Speaker
Stephen Colbert
Satirist Stephen Colbert is returning to his alma mater as a commencement speaker.
Northwestern University announced Monday the host of TV's "The Colbert Report" will address the June 17 ceremony on its Evanston campus.
It was at Northwestern in the mid-1980s that Colbert switched from plans to study serious acting and instead joined an improvisation team. After graduation he joined the comic Second City touring team.
He recently told Northwestern magazine that he switched from serious theater after realizing that failing onstage in comedy can be funny, and healthier.
Stephen Colbert
NZ Tourism Agency Apologizes
Anna Faris
New Zealand's state tourism agency apologized to American actress Anna Faris on Tuesday for attacking her credibility after she described New Zealand men as vulgar.
Faris recently told U.S. talk show host George Lopez that New Zealand men had yelled obscenities at her while she was in the country filming the movie "Yogi Bear." She said she was walking home from the movie set when separate carloads of men shouted profanities at her.
Tourism New Zealand spokesman Ian Long was quoted by the New Zealand Herald on Sunday as saying: "In the same segment, she accepts an award for being a pothead stoner of the year ... I don't think she has any credibility."
The "Scary Movie" star was appearing on the chat show Lopez Tonight to promote "Yogi Bear" when she revealed she had recently won a "Stony," a jocular award sponsored by High Times magazine, for her portrayal of a pot user.
In a statement on Tuesday, the tourism agency apologized for any offense its remarks had caused.
Anna Faris
T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize
Derek Walcott
St. Lucia poet Derek Walcott, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, scooped the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry on Monday for his 2010 collection "White Egrets."
He was chosen from a shortlist of 10 authors including Seamus Heaney, who has won the award before.
Walcott, who has just turned 81, came to the attention of the public in 1962 with a collection of poems called "In a Green Night," which celebrated the Caribbean.
In a recent interview with the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Walcott described the power of rhyme thus: "Rhyme is an attempt to reassemble and reaffirm the possibility of paradise. There is a wholeness, a serenity in sounds coupling to form a memory." Walcott receives a check for 15,000 pounds ($24,000). Each of the shortlisted poets receives 1,000 pounds.
Derek Walcott
Hasty Pudding Man Of The Year
Jay Leno
Talk-show host and comedian Jay Leno has been named Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Man of the Year.
The Massachusetts native is scheduled to receive his pudding pot at a roast on Feb. 4.
Hasty Pudding Theatricals, the nation's oldest undergraduate drama troupe, said "The Tonight Show" host was selected because he has "entertained millions of people over his long and accomplished career in comedy."
Actress Julianne Moore was named Hasty Pudding's Woman of the Year last week.
Jay Leno
Hospital News
Bret Michaels
Officials at a Phoenix hospital say rocker Bret Michaels' surgery to close a hole in his heart was successful.
A surgical team at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix performed the procedure Monday.
A hospital spokeswoman says Michaels is recuperating and remains in the hospital's intensive care unit for observation.
Doctors discovered the hole in Michaels' heart in April when he was treated for a brain hemorrhage.
Bret Michaels
Thrown Off Chicago Ballot
Rahm Emanuel
Just days ago, Rahm Emanuel seemed to be steamrolling the entire field of candidates for Chicago mayor. He had millions in the bank, a huge lead in the polls and abundant opportunities to show off his influence, including a meeting with the visiting Chinese president.
But on Monday, the former White House chief of staff was waging a desperate bid to keep his campaign alive after an Illinois appeals court kicked him off the ballot for not meeting a residency requirement. The surprise decision threw the race into disarray with less than a month to go.
Emanuel's lawyers quickly sought help from the Illinois Supreme Court, asking the justices to stop the appellate ruling and to hear an appeal as soon as possible. But time was running short, since the Chicago Board of Elections planned to begin printing ballots without Emanuel's name within days.
The residency questions have dogged Emanuel ever since he announced his candidacy last fall. Those challenging Emanuel have argued that he does not meet the one-year residency requirement because he rented out his Chicago home and moved his family to Washington to work for President Barack Obama for nearly two years.
Rahm Emanuel
Lawsuit Filed
"Lie to Me"
Was U.S. network Fox deceitful in the creation of its hit show "Lie to Me?"
John Gertz Prods. says it acquired in 2005 the screen rights to the novel "The Interview Room," by Roderick Anscombe, about a psychiatrist and expert in detecting lies who confronts a challenging patient.
The book was turned into a screenplay entitled "Lie to Lie," according to a complaint filed in LA Superior Court.
In September, 2007, JPG and Anscombe say they pitched the project to Fox and discussed "specific plot lines not only for the pilot episode, but also for subsequent episodes."
They claim to have worked with Fox for three months thereafter to turn the idea into a TV series, at which point "defendants falsely stated to plaintiffs that they were abandoning the project. In reality, defendants did not abandon their efforts to make 'The Interview Room' and 'Lie to Lie' into a television series at all - defendants just wanted to cut plaintiffs out of the deal they made."
"Lie to Me"
Ads Exit From MTV Show
"Skins"
Sandwich chain Subway on Monday became the fifth company to distance itself from MTV's controversial new series "Skins," pulling its advertising from the teen show after a campaign by a parents TV watchdog.
A representative for Subway told The Hollywood Reporter the company would not be running its ads on Monday's second episode of the drama series about misfit teens who dabble in drink, drugs and sex.
Subway did not immediately return calls seeking confirmation. The 1.3 million-member Parent Television Council had urged its members to contact Subway by email and letters to the chain's thousands of outlets around the United States.
Fast food chain Taco Bell and chewing gum maker Wrigley have also decided to pull out of the show in the past few days, saying "Skins" was not a good fit for their brands.
"Skins"
Shrinks Online Unit
BBC
Britain's state-backed public broadcaster the BBC said Monday it would close 200 websites over the next two years in a drive to slash costs and reshape online content.
The move, which includes the loss of 360 jobs, is part of a raft of cost-cutting measures following a reduction in its negotiated license fee funding which was chopped by a fifth last October.
The corporation said the cuts were needed to meet a planned reduction of 25 percent, or 34 million pounds ($54 million), in online content.
Sites to go include more obscure domains like skills website "RAW," teen sites "Switch" and "Blast," documentary website "Video Nation" and community sites like "h2g2" and "606." The BBC iPlayer message board will also close.
BBC
Sexual Violence Far Worse Than Reported
Alaska
For every case of rape reported to police in Alaska, the state that consistently posts the nation's highest rate of sexual assault, another nine cases likely go unreported, according to a new study presented on Monday to the state legislature.
The study, conducted by the University of Alaska Anchorage's Justice Center and cooperating researchers, found that 37 percent of surveyed Alaska women had been victims of sexual violence, and 4.3 percent within the last year.
The 871 women surveyed for the study reported "astonishingly high" rates of sexual violence, said Andrew Rosay, director of the university's Justice Center.
Nearly half of those surveyed said intimate partners had threatened them with violence or committed violence against them, according to results presented by Rosay and fellow researchers.
The survey found that 44.8 percent had been victims of actual violence at some time in their lives, and 8.6 percent had been victims of such violence in the past year.
Alaska
Says Penthouse Bid Difficult To Value
Playboy
Playboy's board of directors revealed in a government regulatory filing on Monday it has turned down a higher price offer from the owner of its chief rival magazine Penthouse, indicating the bid's value was less than that of founder Hugh Hefner's all-cash proposal.
FriendFinder Networks, the publisher behind Penthouse, had offered to buy Playboy Enterprises for $6.25 per share in a mix of cash and stock.
On January 10, Playboy said it planned to go private in a deal lead by Hefner along with Rizvi Traverse Management LLC that valued the company at $207 million or $6.15 per share. FriendFinder Networks had placed an offer valuing the company at $210 million.
Raine Securities, the financial advisor to Playboy's special committee, determined that because FriendFinder was private, its shares were difficult to value, according to the government regulatory filing.
Playboy
Lincoln Record Date Altered
National Archives
Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero announced today that Thomas Lowry, a long-time Lincoln researcher from Woodbridge, VA, confessed on January 12, 2011, to altering an Abraham Lincoln Presidential pardon that is part of the permanent records of the U.S. National Archives. The pardon was for Patrick Murphy, a Civil War soldier in the Union Army who was court-martialed for desertion.
Lowry admitted to changing the date of Murphy's pardon, written in Lincoln's hand, from April 14, 1864, to April 14, 1865, the day John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC. Having changed the year from 1864 to 1865, Lowry was then able to claim that this pardon was of significant historical relevance because it could be considered one of, if not the final official act by President Lincoln before his assassination.
In 1998, Lowry was recognized in the national media for his "discovery" of the Murphy pardon, which was placed on exhibit in the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom in the National Archives Building in Washington, DC. Lowry subsequently cited the altered record in his book, Don't Shoot That Boy: Abraham Lincoln and Military Justice, published in 1999.
In making the announcement, the Archivist said, "I am very grateful to Archives staff member Trevor Plante and the Office of the Inspector General for their hard work in uncovering this criminal intention to rewrite history. The Inspector General's Archival Recovery Team has proven once again its importance in contributing to our shared commitment to secure the nation's historical record."
National Archives
Sold At Auction
JFK Ambulance
A car collector who wanted a "piece of history" paid $120,000 at an auction in Arizona for a 1963 ambulance that purportedly carried the body of President John F. Kennedy after he was assassinated, auction officials said.
Addison Brown of Paradise Valley, Arizona, bought the gray Pontiac Bonneville despite reports claiming the vehicle being sold at the Barrett-Jackson auction in Scottsdale was a fake, auction president Steve Davis said.
The Navy ambulance was advertised as the vehicle that met Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base and transported Kennedy's flag-draped casket to Bethesda Naval Hospital for his autopsy and later to the U.S. Capitol to lie in state.
Barret-Jackson officials said they independently verified the authenticity of the vehicle.
JFK Ambulance
German Foundation Refuses To Return Bust
Nefertiti
A German foundation rejected Monday an Egyptian request to return the 3,400-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti, a sculpture which draws over one million viewers annually to a Berlin museum.
Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) sent the request to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which runs the Neues Museum in the German capital where the bust is kept.
"The foundation's position on the return of Nefertiti remains unchanged," foundation president Professor Hermann Parzinger said in a statement. "She is and remains the ambassador of Egypt in Berlin."
German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt discovered the bust about 275 km south of Cairo in 1912, and it was taken to Germany the following year.
Nefertiti
Ex-Wife Pips On YouTube
Steve Harvey
Mary Harvey wants the world to know why her marriage to Steve Harvey failed.
In three separate videos -- totaling 25 minutes -- posted on YouTube over the weekend, Mary, who split from Steve in 2005, rants, "He turned my son against me, had me evicted from our house. I woke up, and everything was gone."
She then accuses him of infidelity from their meeting in the mid-1990s until the time they split.
Mary says she's speaking up because her ex is currently suing her in Texas, and she keeps coming up in interviews, including in Essence magazine's January 11 cover story.
Steve Harvey
Rare Self Portrait To Auction
Andy Warhol
A rare Andy Warhol self portrait in stark white and red, which had been in private hands for over 30 years, will go on sale at Christie's in London next month, anchoring the auctioneer's post-war and contemporary art offering.
The unusually large canvas, 6 feet by 6 feet (1.8 m by 1.8m) features the pensive artist staring straight at the viewer but with half his face swallowed in a shadow of blood red paint. One of 11 self-portraits in this 1967 series, it is the only one restricted to two colors.
Christie's estimates a gavel price of three to 5 million pounds ($8 million) for the painting.
The self-portrait disappeared from view after it was bought in 1974 from Warhol's main dealer, Leo Castelli.
Andy Warhol
In Memory
Paul Picerni
Hollywood character actor Paul Picerni, perhaps best-known as Robert Stack's FBI agent sidekick on television's "The Untouchables," has died. He was 88.
Picerni's daughter Maria Atkinson-Bates says her father died Jan. 12 at Palmdale Regional Medical Center north of Los Angeles after suffering a heart attack at his home in the desert community of Llano. The death was first reported in the Los Angeles Times.
Besides his role as agent Lee Hobson on "The Untouchables" from 1960 to 1963, Picerni starred in "House of Wax" with Vincent Price in 1953. It was the first 3-D movie produced by a major studio. His other films included "The Scalphunters" in 1968 and "Airport" in 1970.
Picerni's appeared in TV shows including "Gunsmoke," "Kojak," "T.J. Hooker" and "Perry Mason."
Paul Picerni
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