Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Scott Burns: "The People Speak: Uncle Sam, You're a Bad Risk" (assetbuilder.com)
Reader D.T. had a more draconian suggestion. It was echoed in many other reader notes: "I have a suggestion for overcoming the government's budget problems. Simply discontinue all salaries, perks, etc., for Senators and Representatives until the budget is properly balanced."
Kenneth Thomas: The Massachusetts Miracle (Middle Class Political Economist)
In 2008, only 10.0% of Massachusetts residents lived in poverty, whereas for Texas the rate was 15.8%.
Jim Hightower: Living in luxury - with Glenn Beck
… Beck (who claims to be the voice of the little man) has pitched his tent in Westlake, a little-known burg some 30 miles west and north of the vibrant city. As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child, but apparently it takes a gated and guarded enclave of ritzy multimillion-dollar mansions to satisfy Beck and others in the rich-and-famous crowd.
Canberra Society of Editors: Muphry's Law
Muphry's Law is the editorial application of the better-known Murphy's Law. Muphry's Law dictates that: if you write anything criticising editing or proofreading, there will be a fault in what you have written; if an author thanks you in a book for your editing or proofreading, there will be mistakes in the book; the stronger the sentiment in (a) and (b), the greater the fault; and any book devoted to editing or style will be internally inconsistent.
The genius who lives downstairs - extract (Guardian)
Aged three, Simon Phillips Norton had an IQ of 178. By five, he could rattle off his 91 times table. At Cambridge, he was the greatest maths prodigy they had ever seen. So what happened to his career? Alexander Masters on a story that doesn't add up.
Instantly Unforgettable (Slate)
Martin Amis remembers Philip Larkin.
Interview by Killian Fox: "Jennifer Egan: 'I would have accepted a marriage proposal from Roger Daltrey on the spot'" (Guardian)
The author of 'A Visit from the Goon Squad' talks winning awards, writing the future and why she would have gone on the road with the Who.
Kevin Smith's 'Red State' pickets the Westboro Baptist Church (Guardian)
Kevin Smith's latest film has taken the fight to the fundamentalists - with a little help from his own congregation, writes Joe Utichi.
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."
wrote:
took the day off.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Reader Contribution
Another Swallowtail
Reader Suggestion
Kinzua Bridge
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, breezy, and a bit cooler than seasonal.
Sued For Libel
Eliot Spitzer
Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was hit with two libel lawsuits seeking $90 million by former Marsh & McLennan Cos executives over a column posted on Slate.com about an insurance bid-rigging scandal.
The lawsuits arose from Spitzer's August 22, 2010, column, "They Still Don't Get It," advocating prosecution of corporate wrongdoers and defending his own enforcement activity against Marsh and insurer American International Group Inc.
William Gilman, a former Marsh executive marketing director, and Edward McNenney, a former Marsh global placement director, contended that they were defamed by the column, which appeared thee months after a judge threw out their convictions on felony antitrust charges. Neither is named in the column.
Slate.com is owned by Washington Post Co, and its parent Slate Group LLC is a defendant in both cases.
Eliot Spitzer
Nominations Announced
Thurber Prize for American Humor
A sportswriter, an essayist and a playwright-comedian are this year's finalists for the Thurber Prize for American Humor.
Mike Birbiglia was nominated for "Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories." It was developed from his one-man show.
David Rakoff was cited for the collection "Half Empty." His essays have appeared everywhere from Vogue to Wired.
Rick Reilly was nominated for "Sports from Hell: My Search for the World's Dumbest Competition."
Thurber Prize for American Humor
Escapes Fire
Kate Winslet
Guests including Academy Award-winning actress Kate Winslet escaped uninjured when fire destroyed Richard Branson's Caribbean home during a tropical storm Monday, said the British businessman.
The Virgin Group boss said about 20 people, including Winslet and her children, were staying in the eight-bedroom Great House on Necker, his private isle in the British Virgin Islands.
Branson said he was staying in another property around 100 yards (meters) away with his wife, Joan and son Sam, 25.
He said the fire broke out around 4 a.m. during a tropical storm with lightning and high winds, and Sam managed to help evacuate Winslet and other guests from the house.
Kate Winslet
Hosting "SNL"
Jimmy Fallon
Comedian and talk show host Jimmy Fallon will return to "Saturday Night Live" to host the show December 17 with musical guest Michael Buble.
"I've never forgotten where I came from. That's why I'm so incredibly honored to be hosting the Saturday Night Times program December 17th on HGTV," joked the "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" talk show host.
Fallon, a six-year "SNL" veteran who began hosting "Late Night" in 2009, also hosted last year's 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards.
Buble is returning to the SNL stage for his second appearance as musical guest. He appeared before with Jon Hamm, starring in an ad for "Hamm & Buble," a new restaurant offering pork and champagne.
Jimmy Fallon
Cyber Squatter Foiling Charity Plan
Amy Winehouse
Amy Winehouse's father Mitch said his plans to set up a charity in his late daughter's name had been frustrated by a cyber squatter who had stolen the organization's intended address on the internet.
Mitch, a former taxi driver who launched his own musical career on the back of Amy Winehouse's success, plans to set up a foundation to help young people suffering from substance abuse, and has already received donations from the public.
Winehouse, a chart-topping singer whose album "Back to Black" helped her win five Grammy awards and international fame, was found dead in her London home on July 23 aged 27. She had a long history of drug and alcohol abuse.
According to the Guardian newspaper, the internet address Amywinehousefoundation.org.uk was registered to a "sghuk" who bought it on August 16.
Amy Winehouse
Needham Downgrades Stock
Rupert
Weakening markets, new government investigations, growing legal costs, and a witch hunt for the Murdochs add risk to owning News Corp shares, said Needham Co and downgraded the media conglomerate's stock.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has historically underperformed broader indices in weak markets and this trend is set to continue, Needham analyst Laura Martin said in a note.
"Recent market volatility suggests that markets may trend downward over the next 12 months," Martin said, adding that News Corp's share price underperformed downward corrections in the S&P 500 typically by 15 percent over 6-12 months.
Martin reckons litigation costs -- arising out of lawsuits and government investigations following the News of The World phone hacking scandal -- will be a meaningful cost center for the company for the foreseeable future.
Rupert
Says He's Destitute
Richard Hatch
Richard Hatch, the winner of the first season of "Survivor," is claiming he's "destitute" as he seeks a court-appointed lawyer to help him appeal a nine-month sentence for failing to settle his tax bill in his tax-evasion case.
Filings in U.S. District Court in Providence made public last week show Richard Hatch believes he should be given free legal representation to fight the prison sentence handed down in March.
Hatch, 50, of Newport, had been returned to prison for violating terms of his release from prison for failing to pay taxes on his $1 million winnings from the CBS reality show.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Lincoln D. Almond is recommending Hatch be denied free legal counsel. He says the appeal is not "taken in good faith."
Richard Hatch
Ex-Beau Seeks Plea
Paris Hilton
Paris Hilton's ex-boyfriend has a court date Wednesday to take a plea deal to settle criminal drug charges stemming from a Las Vegas Strip traffic stop with the celebrity socialite last year.
Cy Waits, 35, a former Las Vegas nightclub manager, didn't appear in court Monday while his lawyer, Richard Schonfeld told Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Bill Kephart that an agreement had been reached in the case.
Schonfeld didn't provide details. He said outside court he couldn't disclose terms ahead of time. Prosecutor L.J. O'Neale wasn't immediately available for comment.
Waits could face up to four years in state prison if convicted of a felony charge of being under the influence of a controlled substance, and less than a year in the Clark County jail in Las Vegas on misdemeanor marijuana possession and driving under the influence charges.
Paris Hilton
Creditors Seek Bankruptcy
Inner City Broadcasting
A large radio broadcasting company targeting African-Americans and founded by civil rights leader Percy Sutton could wind up under the control of billionaire Ron Burkle and other creditors seeking to put it in bankruptcy.
Three creditors asked a bankruptcy judge to put the parent of Inner City Broadcasting Corp into Chapter 11 after the owner of "urban" radio stations around the country, including WBLS and WLIB in New York, pulled out of a deal to restructure its debt.
In a filing Saturday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, Burkle's Yucaipa Corporate Initiatives Fund II LP, Drawbridge Special Opportunities Fund Ltd and Fortress Credit Funding I LP said they are owed $254 million by the parent, Inner City Media Corp.
The creditors said Pierre Sutton, the company's chairman and a son of Percy Sutton, scuttled a proposed prepackaged bankruptcy that would have paid unsecured creditors in full, and allowed a small payment to equity holders, which is unusual when a company is insolvent.
The creditors accused Pierre Sutton of rejecting the proposed deal to gain a bigger payout for himself, and ushering in new directors and replacing restructuring advisers who had recommended the prepackaged bankruptcy plan.
Inner City Broadcasting
Los Angeles Denies Permit
Sunset Junction Music Fest
The Sunset Junction Music Festival & Street Fair, an annual Los Angeles event that has grown to be one of the city's biggest and best-known music festivals, is in jeopardy after the L.A. Board of Public Works voted to deny festival organizers the permits they need to stage this weekend's festival.
The board voted 3-1 to deny the permits at a three-hour public hearing on Monday morning, because the non-profit organization that stages the festival still owes $141,000 in advance fees for this weekend's event.
The festival has lined up more than 75 musical acts, including the Butthole Surfers, Hanson, Melvins, Ozomatli and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.
The board can reconsider its decision and issue a permit at its next meeting on Wednesday if festival organizers pay the fee. The city claims that organizers still owe the city more than $265,000 in unpaid fees for last year's festival, but said that amount did not figure into Monday's decision.
Sunset Junction Music Fest
Fire Damages Kansas House
'In Cold Blood'
Firefighters have put out a small fire at a rural southwest Kansas farmhouse where four family members were killed in 1959, sparking Truman Capote to write the critically acclaimed book "In Cold Blood."
Garden City Fire Chief Allen Shelton says the fire started Sunday night in an upstairs bedroom, most likely after a cigarette was left unattended. Firefighters were able to contain the blaze to a chair in the room, but the rest of the house sustained some smoke and water damage.
The Holcomb home was the scene of the horrific slayings of Herbert Clutter, a prominent farmer and community leader, and his wife, Bonnie Mae Fox, along with their children, 15-year-old Kenyon and 16-year-old Nancy.
The hunt for their killers mesmerized the nation, drawing journalists from across the country.
'In Cold Blood'
In Memory
Reza Badiyi
Reza Badiyi, a prolific television director whose credits included "Get Smart" and "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and who set a Directors Guild of America record for directing the most hours of episodic series television, has died. He was 81.
Badiyi, who had been dealing with a number of medical issues in recent weeks, died Saturday at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, said family spokeswoman Bita Milanian.
The Iranian-born Badiyi, who launched his filmmaking career making documentaries in Iran before moving to the United States in 1955, began directing for TV in the late 1960s.
Among his long list of credits are "Mission: Impossible," "The Rockford Files," "Baretta," "Mannix," "Starsky and Hutch," "The Six Million Dollar Man," "The Incredible Hulk," "Cagney & Lacey," "Falcon Crest," "In the Heat of the Night," "Baywatch" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
Badiyi also directed episodes of the original "Hawaii Five-O" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and was involved in the creation of both shows' memorable title sequences.
In March 1998, Badiyi achieved a Directors Guild milestone for directing the most hours of episodic series television when he finished his 400th TV episode, for the sci-fi series "Sliders."
Badiyi was born April 17, 1930, in Arak, Iran. He graduated from the Academy of Drama in Iran, for which he received a Gold Medal from the Shah of Iran for his acting.
"Later on, I went from acting to cinematography and had the honor of being the shah's personal cinematographer and traveled all over the country with him," he recalled in a 2009 interview with Iran Times International.
He made 21 documentaries before moving to the United States, including "Flood in Khuzestan," which was selected by the Red Cross for screening internationally to generate awareness of the disastrous flooding in the Iranian province. It also earned him the Golden Ribbon of Art from the shah.
"When the U.S. State Department saw the documentary, they invited me to come to the U.S. to study filmmaking," he recalled in the 2009 interview.
After studying filmmaking at Syracuse University, Badiyi moved to Kansas City, Mo., to work at Calvin Co., a major industrial film production company, where he met a young director named Robert Altman.
Badiyi was assistant director on the low-budget 1957 film "The Delinquents," which marked Altman's feature film debut as a director.
Badiyi was once married to actress and writer Barbara Turner and was stepfather to actress Jennifer Jason Leigh.
He is survived by his third wife, Tania; his children, Mimi, Mina, Alexis and Natasha; two brothers, four sisters; and two grandchildren.
Reza Badiyi
In Memory
Jerry Leiber
Jerry Leiber, who with longtime partner Mike Stoller wrote "Hound Dog," ''Jailhouse Rock," ''Yakity Yak" and other hit songs that came to define early rock 'n' roll, died Monday. He was 78.
He was surrounded by family when he died unexpectedly of cardiopulmonary failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said his longtime publicist, Bobbi Marcus.
With Leiber as lyricist and Stoller as composer, the team channeled their blues and jazz backgrounds into pop songs performed by such artists as Elvis Presley, Dion and the Belmonts, the Coasters, the Drifters and Ben E. King in a way that would help create a joyous new musical style.
From their breakout hit, blues great Big Mama Thornton's 1953 rendition of "Hound Dog," until their songwriting took a more serious turn in 1969 with Peggy Lee's recording of "Is That All There Is?" the pair remained one of the most successful teams in pop music history.
"He was my friend, my buddy, my writing partner for 61 years," Stoller said. "We met when we were 17 years old. I am going to miss him."
The two chronicled their lifelong partnership, which Leiber called "the longest running argument in show business," in their 2009 memoir, "Hound Dog: The Leiber & Stoller Autobiography." The pair's writing prowess and influence over the recording industry as pioneering independent producers earned them induction into the non-performer category of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
Leiber, who like Stoller was white, said his musical inspiration came from the close identification he had with black American culture during his boyhood and teen years in Baltimore and Los Angeles.
Thus he was the perfect lyricist for bluesy, jazz-inflected compositions like "Kansas City," ''Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots," ''Charlie Brown," ''Drip Drop," ''Stand By Me" and "On Broadway."
The lyrics could be poignant, as in "On Broadway," or full of humor, as in the antics of high school goofball Charlie Brown, who "calls the English teacher Daddy-O" and laments, "Why's everybody always pickin' on me?"
The result was a serious departure from the classically inflected music that had been produced by a previous generation of pop songwriters that included George Gershwin and Irving Berlin.
Over their career, they had 15 No. 1 hits in a variety of genres by 10 different artists. Among the performers who sang their songs were Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Willie Nelson, Frank Sinatra, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and Otis Redding.
In the 1990s, their songs became the centerpiece of a long-running Broadway revue, "Smokey Joe's Cafe," which won a Grammy for best musical show album in 1996.
Their last song to reach wide acclaim was the 1969 ballad, "Is That All There Is?" Lee's moody rendition of the song, whose lyrics are based on an 1896 short story by German author Thomas Mann, reached the top 20.
Leiber and Stoller continued to collaborate on earnest, eclectic projects, including 1975's "Mirrors."
Leiber was born in Baltimore in 1933 to Jewish immigrants from Poland. He met Stoller after moving to Los Angeles with his mother in 1950.
The two immediately began collaborating and formed their own record label, Spark, in 1953.
Leiber was survived by three children, Jed, Oliver, and Jake; and two grandchildren, Chloe and Daphne.
Jerry Leiber
In Memory
Nick Ashford
Nick Ashford, one-half of the legendary Motown songwriting duo Ashford & Simpson that penned elegant, soulful classics for the likes of Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye and funk hits for Chaka Khan and others, died Monday at age 70, his former publicist said.
Ashford, who along with wife Valerie Simpson wrote some of Motown's biggest hits, died in a New York City hospital, said Liz Rosenberg, who was Ashford's longtime friend. He had been suffering from throat cancer and had undergone radiation treatment, she told The Associated Press.
Though they had some of their greatest success at Motown with classics like "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "Reach Out And Touch Somebody's Hand" by Ross and "You're All I Need To Get By" by Gaye and Tammi Terrell, Ashford & Simpson also created anthems for others, like "I'm Every Woman" by Khan (and later remade by Whitney Houston).
Ashford & Simpson also had success writing for themselves: Perhaps the best-known song they sang was the 1980s hit "Solid As A Rock."
Their relationship stretched more than four decades. They met in 1964 in a New York City church; Ashford, a South Carolina native, had come to the city to pursue a dance career. Simpson was a music student, and after connecting with her, they decided to start to write songs together.
Their first major success occurred when they came up with "Let's Go Get Stoned" for Ray Charles. That song became a huge hit, and soon, they came to the attention of Motown Records and began penning hits for their artists. The started out writing for Gaye and Terrell; in fact, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" was originally their hit, until Ross later rerecorded it and made it her signature song.
The duo, who were married for 38 years, helped sell millions of records for several artists. They also had success as their own entity, but despite "Solid As a Rock," their songs were dwarfed by those they penned for others.
In recent years, the pair continued to perform. They also were owners of the New York City restaurant Sugar Bar, where many top names and emerging talents would put on showcases.
Ashford is survived by his wife and two daughters.
Nick Ashford
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