Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: The Third Depression (nytimes.com)
There was the Long Depression, then the Great Depression, and now we are in the early stages of a third depression. This one is primarily a failure of policy.
Jury: Graduating With No Job? Drive to Every State (huffingtonpost.com)
After I graduated in 2002 with no job, something clicked over in my brain. If I couldn't start my career, I thought, I should at least do something I'd never be able to once I had a career. Something ridiculous.
Louis Licari: I Try to Give a Woman a Makeover -- She Ends Up in Tears (huffingtonpost.com)
One of the questions I'm most frequently asked about Today show's Ambush Makeover is whether all the makeovers are really as happy with their new look as they appear to be on TV. I have always answered "yes!" -- until last week's attempt.
"Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents" by Ian Buruma: A review by Benjamin Moser
Religions tend to claim a monopoly on truth, which is why most of us learn as children that it is impolite to inquire too closely into the religious beliefs of others; and since such beliefs tend to be held with considerable zeal, the wisest course, we are taught, is to stay out of it. This sound advice, not to children but to governments, is reiterated by Ian Buruma, who concludes his 'Taming of the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents' with a paraphrase of Confucius: "Let us leave the spirits aside, until we know how best to serve men."
PAUL CONSTANT: What Will Become of David Foster Wallace? (thestranger.com)
David Foster Wallace won't rest in peace if the publishing industry has anything to say about it. Publishers are preparing to release his unfinished novel, The Pale King, and even his undergraduate thesis on free will is going to be available in bookstores this fall.
Oliver Burkeman: "This column will change your life: Trailblazing in cognitive therapy" (guardian.co.uk)
Thirty years ago, a young pyschiatrist published a book called Feeling Good. What happened next?
Alyssa Jung: How much do you love Chelsea Handler? (huffingtonpost.com)
One of my favorite moments was when she let us know how she really feels about cats. "They bring nothing to the table. They go to the bathroom in a box, in a box in a room, and then walk out like nothing happened, like 'hey, what did I miss?' You missed wiping yourself, that's what you missed."
The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema: The greatest films not in the English language... (empireonline.com)
As the World Cup kicks off in South Africa, now's the time to celebrate the great breadth of world cinema out there. From Brazil to Japan to France and Senegal, from Neo-Realism to Dogme to J-horror, we've compiled a list of the very best films not in the English language (note: features, not documentaries). So rustle up some sushi, strike up a gauloise and make sure you've locked your bicycle as we count down the top 100...
Oliver Burkeman: "Larry David: 'I'm cranky'" (guardian.co.uk)
'Seinfeld' and 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' have been huge TV hits and made him millions. Now he's starring in the new Woody Allen film. So what has Larry David got to complain about? Quite a bit, actually.
Troy Patterson: Single-Source Television (slate.com)
The Cooking Channel is for those mildly ashamed to call themselves "foodies."
Regina Weinreich: "Nice Girls Don't Stay for Breakfast: Robert Mitchum and Great Directors" (huffingtonpost.com)
Bruce Weber's documentary-in-progress Nice Girls Don't Stay for Breakfast about actor Robert Mitchum shows the Hollywood tough guy of Westerns and noirs as a shy, modest, non-celebrity.
Roger Ebert: Review of "COME AND SEE: (UNRATED; 1985; A Great Movie)
It's said that you can't make an effective anti-war film because war by its nature is exciting, and the end of the film belongs to the survivors. No one would ever make the mistake of saying that about Elem Klimov's "Come and See." This 1985 film from Russia is one of the most devastating films ever about anything, and in it, the survivors must envy the dead.
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
Second City Television (SCTV) is a Canadian television sketch comedy show offshoot from Toronto's The Second City troupe that ran between 1976 and 1984.
wrote:
answered:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny with a nice breeze.
Celebrity Power List
Forbes
Women claimed three of the top five spots in Forbes' magazine's 2010 Celebrity power list, with singer Lady Gaga making her first entry and Oprah Winfrey retaking her No.1 position.
Talk show host Winfrey earned an estimated $315 million, putting her atop the annual Forbes' Celebrity 100 list for the fourth time. Winfrey reclaimed the No. 1 spot from 2009 winner Angelina Jolie, who fell to 18th in the latest ranking.
Grammy-winning R&B singer Beyonce rose to second with an estimated $87 million from a tour and album sales, together with deals in fashion, fragrance and other endorsements.
"Avatar" director James Cameron jumped back onto the Forbes list for the first time since 1999, landing at No. 3 after his movie earned a record $2.7 billion at worldwide box offices.
Glam pop star Lady Gaga made the list for the first time, taking fourth place with estimated earnings of $62 million.
Forbes
In Talks To Direct "Hobbit" Movies
Peter Jackson
It seems Peter Jackson might direct the two "Hobbit" movies after all.
The "Lord of the Rings" maestro is in negotiations to shoot the long-awaited adaptations, which were left without a captain after Guillermo del Toro parted ways on May 30. Obstacles to a deal remain, including agreeing on a schedule that will allow Jackson to fast-track the films for release in 2012 and 2013, but insiders are cautiously optimistic that a pact can be worked out.
Talks, which have been going on for a week or two, heated up in recent days between Warner Bros./New Line and Jackson's team. Complications include the shaky financial situation of partner MGM, which owns the "Hobbit" rights and could hold up the production timetable. A significant delay would be a dealbreaker for Jackson.
Del Toro left the project over similar timing concerns. His move surprised observers because the filmmaker had devoted so much time to work with Jackson drawing up plans for the movies, and working on the script with Jackson and his fellow "Lord of the Rings" scribes Fran Walsh and Phillippa Boyens. He even moved his family to New Zealand, and casting was in the early stages.
Peter Jackson
"Resigning" From "The Office" Next Year
Steve Carell
Actor Steve Carell is tendering his resignation as the egotistical boss Michael Scott of "The Office", and leaving the hit TV comedy show next year.
Carell told Us Magazine that he would be leaving paper company Dunder Mifflin at the end of the upcoming TV season, in May 2011.
"Yes, it will be my last," Carell, 47, told UsMagazine.com while promoting his movie "Despicable Me". "It's the last (season) on my contract, and I want to honor my contract."
Carell, who won a Golden Globe award for his role, said he wanted to spend more time with his wife and two young children.
Steve Carell
X-Rays Auctioned
Marilyn Monroe
Three X-rays of Hollywood actress Marilyn Monroe's chest and pelvis taken during a hospital visit have sold for more than 10 times their pre-sale estimates, earning $45,000 (29,800 pounds).
Auction house Julien's said in a statement that the sale was part of an auction of Hollywood Legends memorabilia which took place at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas over the weekend with the X-rays expected to go for $800 to $1,200 each.
The Monroe X-rays came from a 1954 visit by the actress to the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. The actress died in August 1962 at the age of 36.
Other items also sold at the auction included a chair from Monroe's last photo shoot that went for $35,000, Christopher Reeves' Superman VI costume which sold for $32,500 and a dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in "Funny Face" which went for $56,250.
Marilyn Monroe
Hospital News
Jennifer Capriati
Former tennis star Jennifer Capriati was recovering Monday from an accidental overdose of prescribed medication, a family spokeswoman said.
The 34-year-old Capriati, once ranked No. 1 in a career sidetracked by personal troubles, was in stable condition and expected to make a full recovery, spokeswoman Lacey Wickline told The Associated Press. She declined to identify the medication.
Capriati won three majors - two Australian Opens, one French Open - and a gold medal in the 1992 Olympics. She also was the youngest semifinalist at the French Open in 1990, when at age 14 she lost to eventual champion Monica Seles.
But the child prodigy burned out of tennis and retired several times from a game she had been pushed to play nearly her entire life.
Jennifer Capriati
Medical Records Overexposed
Porn Stars
Two former porn actresses say their private medical information was wrongly exposed by a Los Angeles clinic that caters to the adult film industry.
Diana Lee Grandmason and Bess Garren said Monday they are suing because the release forms actors are required to sign at the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation's clinic are too broad.
The clinic caters to porn actors who must prove they are free of sexually transmitted diseases shortly before filming begins.
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, claims the release forms wrongly allow an unlimited number of test disclosures to an undefined group of people.
Porn Stars
Arrested For Drunk Driving
Vince Neil
Motley Crue singer Vince Neil has been arrested on suspicion of drunk driving and was being held in a Las Vegas jail, police said on Monday.
Las Vegas police had few details of the arrest but Neil, 49, was expected to appear in court later on Monday.
Celebrity website TMZ.com said Neil's car was pulled over late on Sunday night after police received a complaint from a woman who alleged Neil had smashed her camera earlier in the evening.
Neil, who split with Motley Crue in 1992 and rejoined the band in 1997, served jail time in 1986 for drunken driving after a car crash that left a drummer dead.
Vince Neil
Charged With DUI
Chris Klein
Los Angeles prosecutors say they have charged "American Pie" actor Chris Klein with drunken driving.
City Attorney spokesman Frank Mateljan says Klein faces two misdemeanor driving under the influence charges and will be arraigned July 9.
Mateljan says Klein faces a minimum of three days in jail and up to a year sentence if convicted because of a prior drunken driving case.
Klein played the character of Chris "Oz" Ostreicher in 1999's "American Pie" and in the 2001 sequel. He was also featured in the 1999 film "Election."
Chris Klein
Pleads Guilty To Tax-Evasion
Method Man
Hip-hop star Method Man pleaded guilty to a tax-evasion charge Monday, writing a check on the spot for the final $40,000 restitution payment after owing about $106,000.
The former Wu-Tang Clan member was arrested Oct. 9 on charges he failed to pay state and personal income taxes. He pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted failure to pay tax.
He was sentenced to a conditional discharge, which means the arrest will be purged from his record if he stays out of trouble.
The musician, actor and artist, who lives on Staten Island and whose real name is Clifford Smith, failed to file tax returns for 2004 through 2007, prosecutors said. The most he owed for one year was $32,799.
Method Man
Corpse Fucker 1st Class
Joe Jackson
Michael Jackson's father is withdrawing his request to receive more than $15,000 a month from his late son's estate.
A court filing says Joe Jackson is dropping his bid to receive a monthly allowance in favor of pursuing a wrongful death lawsuit over his son's death.
Joe Jackson filed a lawsuit in federal court on Friday against Dr. Conrad Murray, who has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the singer's death.
The Jackson family patriarch was omitted from his son's will, but in November sought a stipend to pay his monthly expenses.
Joe Jackson
Admonishes Austrian Cardinal
Vatican't
The Vatican on Monday issued an unprecedented rebuke of a top cardinal who had accused the retired Vatican No. 2 of blocking clerical sex abuse investigations, publicly dressing down a man who had been praised for his criticism of church abuse cover-ups.
The silencing of Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the archbishop of Vienna and long considered a papal contender, drew heated criticism from clerical abuse victims. They said the Vatican should be honoring Schoenborn, not publicly humiliating him, for his calls for greater transparency and demands for a crackdown on priests who rape and sodomize children.
Schoenborn has also called for an open discussion of priestly celibacy; views that the Vatican said he "clarified" on Monday during an audience with the pope.
As it admonished Schoenborn, the Vatican appeared caught on the defensive on two other fronts in the ongoing sex abuse scandal: it remained locked in a diplomatic tiff with Belgium over the brazen raid on church offices last week, during which police detained bishops and even opened a crypt in search of church abuse documents. And it bristled at the U.S. Supreme Court decision to let a sex abuse lawsuit in Oregon naming the Holy See go ahead.
Vatican't
Considering Topless Beach
Asbury Park
Once among the top seaside resorts on the East Coast, Asbury Park is keeping abreast of vacationers' changing tastes: It is considering letting women go topless on a city beach.
But unlike other secluded nude beaches in the Garden State, this one could be right in your face, with the boardwalk offering a prime view that some parents might not want junior to see.
The city council is considering a request from Reggie Flimlin, an Asbury Park woman who owns a yoga studio, to allow women to decide for themselves whether they want to wear bikini tops on the beach. She says it's already happening on less populated beaches in the city's north end.
The 48-year-old city resident has lived and sunbathed topless in Europe and Miami, where such conduct is paid little mind.
Asbury Park
In Memory
Sen. Robert Byrd
Senator Robert C. Byrd, a son of West Virginia coal country who used his mastery of Senate rules and a taste for hardball tactics to become a passionate and often feared advocate for the state and the Senate he loved, died Monday at age 92.
The Democrat's 51 years in the Senate made him the longest serving senator in history, while his white mane, stentorian voice and flamboyant speeches citing Roman emperors gave him the presence of a man from a grander, distant time.
In many ways, Byrd embodied the changes the nation has undergone in the past half century. A one-time segregationist and opponent of civil rights legislation, he evolved into a liberal hero as one of the earliest, unrepentant and most vocal foes of the Iraq war and a supporter of the rights of gays to serve in the military. He was the acknowledged Senate Renaissance man, who could recite poetry by memory for hours and yet be ruthless in advancing his legislative agenda - which often involved corralling federal dollars for his perpetually struggling state.
Brandishing his copy of the U.S. Constitution that he always carried with him, he resisted any attempt to diminish the role of the Senate, as in the days leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq when he was one of the few to stand up against ceding warmaking powers to resident George W. Bush.
Byrd was equally tireless in steering federal dollars to his state, one of the nation's poorest, and his efforts will live on in the many highways and buildings in West Virginia that carry his name.
In comportment and style, Byrd often seemed a Senate throwback to a courtlier 19th century. He could recite poetry, quote the Bible, discuss the Constitutional Convention and detail the Peloponnesian Wars - and frequently did in Senate debates.
Byrd's lodestar was protecting the Constitution. He frequently pulled out a dog-eared copy of it from a pocket in one of his trademark three-piece suits. He also defended the Senate in its age-old rivalry with the executive branch, no matter which party held the White House.
Unlike other prominent Senate Democrats such as 2004 presidential nominee John Kerry of Massachusetts, who voted to authorize the war in Iraq, Byrd stood firm in opposition - and felt gratified when public opinion swung behind him.
Robert Carlyle Byrd was born Nov. 20, 1917, in North Wilkesboro, N.C., as Cornelius Calvin Sale Jr., the youngest of five children.
Before he was 1, his mother died and his father sent him to live with an aunt and uncle, Vlurma and Titus Byrd, who renamed him and moved to the coal-mining town of Stotesbury, W.Va. He didn't learn his original name until he was 16 and his real birthday until he was 54.
Byrd's foster father was a miner who frequently changed jobs, and Byrd recalled that the family's house was "without electricity, ... no running water, no telephone, a little wooden outhouse."
He graduated from high school but could not afford college. Married in 1936 to high school sweetheart Erma Ora James - with whom he had two daughters - he pumped gas, cut meat and during World War II was a shipyard welder.
After six years in the West Virginia legislature, Byrd was elected to the U.S. House in 1952 in a race in which his brief Klan membership became an issue. He said he joined because of its anti-communism.
Byrd entered Congress as one of its most conservative Democrats. He was an early supporter of the Vietnam War, and his 14-hour, 13-minute filibuster against the 1964 civil rights bill remains one of the longest ever. His views gradually moderated, particularly on economic issues, but he always sided with his state's coal interests in confrontations with environmentalists.
His love of Senate traditions inspired him to write a four-volume history of the chamber. It also led him to oppose laptops on the Senate floor and to object when a blind aide tried bringing her seeing-eye dog into the chamber.
In 2004, Byrd got Congress to require schools and colleges to teach about the Constitution every Sept. 17, the day the document was adopted in 1787.
Sen. Robert Byrd
In Memory
Corey Allen
Corey Allen, who fatally challenged James Dean to a "chicken race" in the 1955 film classic "Rebel Without a Cause" before embarking on a career as a prolific TV director, died of natural causes in Hollywood on Sunday, two days before his 76th birthday.
With the May 29 death of his longtime friend Dennis Hopper, Allen was briefly the last surviving member of the "Rebel" main cast. He played Buzz Gunderson, one of the pic's antagonistic tough guys in a leather jacket.
Allen turned to directing in 1969, and collected an Emmy Award for a 1983 episode of "Hill Street Blues" after being nominated for another series episode two years earlier. In all, he shot about 80 TV episodes and 20 TV movies.
Corey Allen
In Memory
Bill Aucoin
Bill Aucoin, who discovered the rock group Kiss and helped build them into a musical and merchandising juggernaut, died Monday in Florida. He was 66.
A former television cinematographer, Aucoin discovered Kiss in New York City in 1973 and helped launch the makeup-wearing, fire-breathing quartet into a moneymaking machine.
He financed the band's first tour on his personal American Express credit card when money was tight, but he was well rewarded when the band's popularity exploded in 1975 with the hit "Rock And Roll All Nite."
Aucoin first saw the band at a showcase gig at New York's Diplomat Hotel, then brought it upstairs to meet with record company executive Neil Bogart, who signed it as the first act on his Casablanca Records label.
After parting with Kiss in the early 1980s, Aucoin managed Billy Squier and Billy Idol.
He is survived by his longtime partner, Roman Fernandez, and two sisters, Betty Britton and Janet Bankowski.
Bill Aucoin
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