Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Laura Barton: Giving up meat is easy (guardian.co.uk)
No need to panic. Here are some tips on how to go vegetarian.
Aisha Labi: At FIRE's 10th-Anniversary Bash, Nat Hentoff Touches Off a Blaze (chronicle.com)
"Ah, the beauty of free speech!" As he took the podium last night at the 10th-anniversary dinner for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the organization's president, Greg Lukianoff, adopted a tone more rueful than celebratory.
Matea Gold: Kids watch more than a day of TV each week (latimes.com)
The latest figures from Nielsen have children's TV usage at an eight-year high. Children's health advocates warn of adverse effects.
Rachel Shabi: The disabled Palestinian standup helping refugees find their funny side (guardian.co.uk)
Maysoon Zayid helps disabled West Bank refugees become standup comics. It's not as crazy as it sounds, she tells Rachel Shabi - the saddest stories are often the funniest .
Mark Morford: 10 amazing truths you already suspected (sfgate.com)
Go ahead, pretend you didn't know. Pretend it wasn't obvious. (Volume II!)
David Barnett: Misremembering Jack Kerouac (guardian.co.uk)
Thanks partly to his miserable end 40 years ago, Kerouac has lost some of his lustre as a counterculture icon. But that was never what he wanted to be.
D J Taylor: The last writes (newstatesman.com)
There is neither the money nor the space to sustain a career as a full-time book reviewer. D J Taylor mourns the slow death of the man of letters.
Robert Pinsky: Same-Old, Same-Old (slate.com)
Alexander Pope's "Epistle" and the art of making poetry from normal, banal, petty life.
RICHARD ROEPER: Who would let their 9-year-old dress like Noah Cyrus? (suntimes.com)
You can't dress 9-year-old like that and not expect trouble
Steve Johnson: Steve Martin reunites with his old stand-up partner, the banjo, for serious music (Chicago Tribune)
Steve Martin understands that the path has been made difficult for movie stars who would moonlight as musicians.
Holly Johnson: 'I'm over Frankie Goes to Hollywood' (timesonline.co.uk)
As we get set to Relax again, a still-fit and still-feisty Holly Johnson sips green tea and chats with Pete Paphides.
John Lopez: "Live: Kevin Smith at the Orpheum Theatre" (latimes.com)
The onetime indie-film maverick conducts a rambling, profane and ultimately entertaining Q & A session with fans.
The Weekly Poll
Current Question
The 'BCE Files' Edition...
Eenie Meenie, Chili Beanie, The Spirits are about to speak!
Have you ever experienced any manner of 'Paranormal Activity'?
(er, No, episodes involving 'shrooms, Blotter, Maui Wowie, etc. do NOT count, haha!)
Send your response to
Results Tuesday
nailed it with:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, and while not as windy, it's pretty brisk for these parts.
It's Not Michael Jackson
Richest Dead Celebrity
According to Forbes magazine, the richest dead celebrity isn't Michael Jackson.
Although the King of Pop's estate has been big news since his death in June, the top-earning dead celebrity is French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent. Forbes released its ninth annual poll Wednesday.
According to the magazine, Laurent earned $350 million in the past year. Much of his estate was auctioned off at Christie's in February. Laurent died of brain cancer in June 2008.
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein rank second with combined earnings of $235 million, followed by Jackson with $90 million, Elvis Presley with $55 million and J.R.R. Tolkien with $50 million. Charles Schulz, John Lennon, Theodor Geisel, Albert Einstein and Michael Crichton round out the top 10 list.
Richest Dead Celebrity
Happy With Reruns
MSNBC
MSNBC is much less likely to start a third prime-time news show because its executives are pleased with how well a repeat of Keith Olbermann's "Countdown" is doing at 10 p.m. ET.
MSNBC chief executive Phil Griffin talked this year of actively searching for a new 10 p.m. host. Reruns of Olbermann's 8 p.m. show have aired there since March 2008.
Yet in October, Olbermann has averaged 600,000 viewers in that later time slot, nearly on par with Anderson Cooper's 689,000 on CNN, the Nielsen Co. said. In the 25-to-54 demographic, which MSNBC most actively courts, Olbermann's rerun beat Cooper's first-run show in that hour for the first time ever. Fox News Channel's Greta Van Susteren leads with just under 2 million total viewers.
Olbermann's rerun is getting nearly 60 percent of the audience that his first-run show does earlier in the evening, Nielsen said.
MSNBC
More Pickups
NBC
NBC has ordered six more episodes of comedy-drama "Chuck" and has opted not to pick up additional episodes from "Trauma" beyond the freshman drama's original 13-episode order.
The pickup for "Chuck" brings the show's total third-season order to 19 episodes. With the expanded order, "Chuck" is rumored to launch in January.
The series now will finish production on its 13-episode order before winding down.
NBC's other two freshman series, "Community" and "Mercy," have been picked up for a full season, along with sophomore "Parks and Recreation."
NBC
Donates $1M
Bob Barker
Former television game show host Bob Barker, who ended episodes of "The Price is Right" by asking viewers to spay and neuter their pets, donated $1 million to Drury University to establish a professorship on animal rights that he hopes will lead to a full undergraduate degree program.
Barker, who graduated from the small liberal arts school in 1947 with a degree in economics, said Tuesday that he hopes the school will eventually be able to offer a program of studies that would train them to be animal rights activists and to respect animals.
The new professorship went to Patricia McEachern, a professor of French who will work full time to develop what Barker and McEachern said would be the nation's first undergraduate program in animal rights.
Barker named the new professorship for his late wife, Dorothy Jo Barker.
Bob Barker
Spain Starts Exhumation
Federico Garcia Lorca
Forensic experts on Wednesday began exhuming a mass unmarked grave that could hold the remains of the acclaimed poet Federico Garcia Lorca, in a milestone in Spain's drive to address the legacy of its 1936-39 civil war.
Working under a tent-like structure, the team started preliminary work staking out and cleaning surface soil at the site in southern Spain in preparation for digging in earnest, said Sara Gil, an archaeologist who is a member of the team.
The work is being done on a remote hillside area near the southern city of Granada, near where the men were killed by members of a militia loyal to Gen. Francisco Franco.
The war, which still divides Spaniards 70 years after it ended, pitted Franco-led rightist forces that rose up against an elected leftist Republican government and eventually prevailed, installing a dictatorship that lasted until Franco's death in 1975. The conflict and ensuing hardship left an estimated half a million people dead.
Federico Garcia Lorca
He's Sorry Now
Shepard Smith
Fox News Channel anchor Shepard Smith apologized for a "lack of balance" following a political report where the Republican candidate for New Jersey governor was interviewed and the Democratic incumbent wasn't.
Fox correspondent Shannon Bream had wrapped up a live interview with GOP candidate Chris Christie on Smith's afternoon news show Tuesday when the anchor asked, "When will you be interviewing Jon Corzine?"
Bream replied that despite "multiple requests," Corzine hadn't made himself available for an interview.
"I didn't know that was about to happen," Smith then said. "My apologies for the lack of balance there. If I had control, it wouldn't have happened."
Shepard Smith
Meth-Powered
Andre Agassi
Andre Agassi's upcoming autobiography contains an admission he used crystal meth in 1997 and failed a drug test - a result thrown out after he lied by saying he "unwittingly" took the substance.
According to an excerpt of the autobiography "Open" published Wednesday in The Times of London, the eight-time Grand Slam champion writes that he sent a letter to the ATP tour to explain the positive test, saying he accidentally drank from a soda spiked with meth by his assistant "Slim."
"Then I come to the central lie of the letter," Agassi writes. "I say that recently I drank accidentally from one of Slim's spiked sodas, unwittingly ingesting his drugs. I ask for understanding and leniency and hastily sign it: Sincerely.
The International Tennis Federation said it was "surprised and disappointed" by Agassi's revelations.
Andre Agassi
Voted Worst Celebrity Influence
Miley Cyrus
Miley Cyrus, one of Disney's hottest stars of the past three years with hit records and hit films, has been voted the worst celebrity influence of 2009 by the very people who made her a star, tweens and teens, according to an online poll on Wednesday.
Cyrus, 16, took 42 percent of votes in the poll for AOL's JSYK.com, (Just So You Know) website aimed at 9-15 year-olds, pushing Britney Spears and rapper Kanye West into second and third places, respectively, in a section on worst celebrity influences of the year.
No reasons were given for the poor showing of the singer-actress and the popular star of Disney Channel's "Hannah Montana" television series.
Elsewhere, the stars of vampire movies "Twilight" and its forthcoming sequel "New Moon" dominated the JSYK.com poll. Kristen Stewart was voted favorite female movie actress and Taylor Lautner surged past Robert Pattinson in both the favorite male movie star and "cool guy you'd like to hang out with" categories.
Miley Cyrus
Women Targeted
TV Violence
A group that monitors violence in prime-time television says it's concerned about women being more frequent targets.
The Parents Television Council released its report Wednesday. It says it counted more than 400 violent acts against women in prime time on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox shows in February and May this year. There were just under 200 during those months in 2004.
The report shows there were more than 3,900 violent acts not specifically aimed at women during those two months. The total is just a 2 percent increase from five years ago.
TV Violence
4 Charged With Burglary
Hollywood
Los Angeles prosecutors have charged four people with burglarizing the homes of Hollywood celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan.
Felony residential burglary charges are being filed Wednesday against three women and one man, who range in ages from 18 to 27. Prosecutors have declined to file charges against 18-year-old Rachel Lee pending further investigation. She has been described by police as the "driving force" behind the burglaries.
The suspects include Alexis Neiers, who is filming a pilot for a reality show, and Courtney Ames, Diana Tamayo and Roy Lopez Jr. The group is accused of breaking into the homes of Lindsay Lohan and "The Hills" star Audrina Patridge. A prosecution spokeswoman says additional charges will be filed against an alleged accomplice, Nicholas Prugo.
Hollywood
Phone Company Admits Meteorite Hoax
Latvia
A telephone company Monday said it had dreamed up a purported meteorite strike in Latvia as a publicity stunt.
A spokesman for the firm was quoted by the Leta news agency as saying the hoax had been meant to "inspire Latvia" and give the world a rest from the economic crisis headlines about the Baltic state's economic crisis.
Latvian authorities said the cost of calling out firefighters, police, the army and scientists was at least 2,000 lats (2,800 euros, 4,250 dollars).
Experts who rushed to the scene cast doubt on claims that the 10-metre-wide (33-foot-wide) crater had been caused by a meteorite, noting spade marks, and suggested that the flames may have been caused by molten metal being poured into the crater.
Latvia
PR Problems
Rough Patch
On Monday, a French court convicted the Church of Scientology on fraud charges stemming from complaints by two women. The judge in the case levied massive fines as punishment, fueling a long-running battle between Scientology and France, which considers the group a "sect" rather than a religion. The legal ruling is the latest in a string of recent setbacks for the star-studded organization.
Scientology lost one of its more well-known members last week when Oscar-winning screenwriter and director Paul Haggis ("Crash," "Million Dollar Baby") publicly renounced his membership. In a letter to Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis, Haggis cited the group's opposition to gay-marriage rights in California. He also chastised Davis' recent public denial of Scientology's mandate of "disconnecting," which allegedly requires members to cut ties with disapproving friends and family members. In the letter, Haggis said that his wife went so far as to disown her parents, despite his protestations. He went on to denounce Davis for using personal information to smear Scientology defectors like Amy Scobee, the person who led the group's celebrity recruitment efforts for more than 20 years. About the treatment of Scobee, Haggis wrote ":How dare you use private information in order to label someone an "adulteress?" You took Amy Scobee's most intimate admissions about her sexual life and passed them onto the press and then smeared them all over the pages your newsletter! ... She ran the entire celebrity center network, and was a loyal senior executive of the church for what, 20 years? You want to rebut her accusations, do it, and do it in the strongest terms possible - but that kind of character assassination is unconscionable.
Prior to Paul Haggis' letter being made public, Davis himself made news when he angrily stormed out of an interview with "Nightline" interviewer Martin Bashir after Bashir asked him whether or not he believed in Xenu, the intergalactic warlord reportedly at the center of Scientology's theology. Davis said the line of questioning perpetuated "disgusting perversions" about Scientology. He then showed up at ABC's headquarters in New York 45 minutes before the interview was set to air and demanded that the network pull the footage from its broadcast, a request that was denied.
Rough Patch
West Virginia
Bigfoot
A team of Bigfoot enthusiasts is hoping to find the legendary creature in the bogs and barrens of a West Virginia wilderness area.
Members of Sasquatch Watch of Virginia went camping in the rugged Allegheny Mountain highlands of the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area with GPS navigators, cameras, voice recorders and plaster of Paris to make casts of huge footprints.
Billy Willard, founder of the group, says they're looking in places where people have reported sightings. He says he has never seen Bigfoot himself.
Bruce Harrington, the group's self-described skeptical member, says he has yet to see convincing proof that the creature exists.
Bigfoot
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