Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Wall Street Loses Its Immunity (New York Times)
The modern lords of finance look at the protesters and ask, Don't they understand what we've done for the U.S. economy? The answer is: yes, many of the protesters do understand what Wall Street and more generally the nation's economic elite have done for us. And that's why they're protesting
Suze Orman: "'Occupy Wall Street': Approved!" (Huffington Post)
I want to publicly say thank you to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Thank you for not accepting the status quo. Thank you for not assuming there is nothing to be done. Thank you for rattling the cages.
Jim Hightower: A political Buddy for the people
Here's a little sampler of Roemer's ideas: "I would have a rule that lobbyists could not give a check to a candidate... that PACs could give no more than individuals... that there'd be no superPACs." And, he adds: "I would have a rule that there would be criminal penalties for violation of these rules." This guy might actually be the people's buddy! Wouldn't you like to see Rick, Mitt, Michele and the rest have to deal with him in debates?
Lucy Mangan: Britain's manners are in rude health (Guardian)
'If you want to see how civilised Britain is, you have only to take a walk to the park, any park… But privatising the NHS, that's rude.'
Jim Harness: The Divine Dali Drama (Neatorama)
The Dali we all recognize was actually the third Salvador Dali in his family. His father also had the name and his parents had another son that was also named Salvador, but he died nine months before Dali was born. For this reason, Dali's parents always believed that he was the reincarnation of his brother, a belief the artist also held throughout his life. In many of his writings, he claimed that he felt deep stress from the pressures of living as both himself and his dead brother.
Laura Barnett: "Portrait of the artist: Michael Morpurgo, author" (Guardian)
'Writer's block is a myth. There are moments when it is difficult to get on, but there's always a good reason for it.'
Mary Beard: Alexander: How Great? (NY Review of Books)
In 51 BC, Marcus Tullius Cicero, who had reluctantly left his desk in Rome to become military governor of the province of Cilicia in southern Turkey, scored a minor victory against some local insurgents. As we know from his surviving letters, he was conscious that he was treading in the footsteps of a famous predecessor: …
"My Song" by Harry Belafonte: Reviewed by Adam Bradley
Harry Belafonte's My Song is in many ways just this sort of conventional celebrity memoir. What distinguishes it -- and elevates it to excellence -- is the quality of experience that the book chronicles.
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."
Who was born Gary Neil Miller?
He was born as Gary Neil Miller to Jewell Miller and Fred B. Miller of Fargo, Oklahoma in Shattuck, Oklahoma, during the time of the Dust Bowl drought. He chose his stage name in order to differentiate himself from another Gary Miller in Screen Actors Guild. ("Dunn" was his maternal grandmother's maiden name, but his reason for choosing "Michael" is unknown and not derived from his monastic experience in 1958. He was an only child. When he was four, his family moved to Dearborn, Michigan.
wrote:
took the night off.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and seasonal.
Wall St. Protesters Give Hope
Harry Belafonte
The Occupy Wall Street protesters have added an eminent supporter to their collective voice: singer, actor and activist Harry Belafonte.
Belafonte, 84, who chronicles his activism in the U.S. civil rights movement and beyond in his new book and in a documentary, is pleased that a new generation is carrying on his legacy of agitating for social and political change.
"Sing Your Song", a documentary about Belafonte's life and activism, was shown at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and airs on Monday on HBO. It comes on the heels of his memoir, "My Song", which hit shelves last week.
Though he became the first artist with a gold album and has starred in movies alongside the likes of Dorothy Dandridge, Joan Collins and Sidney Poitier, Belafonte's "song" began on a difficult note.
Growing up in Harlem and spending time in his mother's home country of Jamaica, he was surrounded by poverty. But the challenges of his early life helped inspire Belafonte's activist passions.
Harry Belafonte
Funny Or Die
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton is happy to have celebrities call attention to his Clinton Foundation, but he's not above spoofing them, either.
In a new Web video for the 10th anniversary of the Clinton Foundation, a coterie of stars performs as the foundation's airheaded "Celebrity Division." Ben Stiller leads an unproductive fundraising brainstorming session with Matt Damon, Sean Penn, Kristen Wiig, Jack Black, Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen.
The former president makes a cameo.
The video was produced by Funny Or Die and will be posted on the site early Tuesday.
Bill Clinton
November Hosts
"SNL"
Charlie Day, Emma Stone and Jason Segel will host "Saturday Night Live" episodes in November, with respective musical guests Maroon 5, Coldplay, and Florence + The Machine.
Day and Segel will be hosting for the first time; it will be Stone's second hosting gig.
Day, star of "Horrible Bosses" and a star, writer and executive producer of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," with host November 5.
Stone will host November 12, and Segel will host November 19 to coincide with the November 23 release of "The Muppets."
"SNL"
100-Year-Old Marathoner Finishes
Fauja Singh
A 100-year-old runner became the oldest person to complete a full-distance marathon when he finished the race in Toronto on Sunday.
Fauja Singh earned a spot in the Guinness World Records for his accomplishment.
It took Singh more than eight hours to cross the finish line - more than six hours after Kenya's Kenneth Mungara won the event for the fourth straight year - and he was the last competitor to complete the course.
Sunday's run was Singh's eighth marathon - he ran his first at age 89 - and wasn't the first time he set a record.
In the 2003 Toronto event, he set the mark in the 90-plus category, finishing the race in 5 hours, 40 minutes and 1 second.
Fauja Singh
Accidental Finalist Withdraws
National Book Award
Lauren Myracle, a best-selling author who saw her young adult novel Shine accidentally designated as a National Book Award finalist, has withdrawn the title for consideration from the National Book Foundation's annual competition. Myracle said on Monday that the foundation had requested that she withdraw Shine "to preserve the integrity of the award."
The mistake occurred on Oct. 12, when foundation officials announced Shine among the award finalists before a live audience as one of the five finalists in the young people's literature category. The foundation added a sixth book, Chime by Franny Billingsley, to the list later that day.
"We made a mistake," National Book Foundation executive editor Harold Augenbraum said. "There was a miscommunication."
In interviews, Augenbraum has declined to elaborate on what the miscommunication was or how it occurred. But, as the Los Angeles Times and others have noted, Shine sounds an awful lot like Chime.
National Book Award
Returnsing For Fifth Season
"Sons of Anarchy"
FX's hit biker-gang drama, "Sons of Anarchy," will be back for a 13-episode fifth season, the network announced Monday.
The return of Kurt Sutter's series, the top-rated drama in basic cable and the highest-rated series ever on FX, was no surprise. On a first-run basis, season four episodes are averaging 5.8 million total viewers and 3.9 million in the prized 18-49 demographic. Those numbers are up 30 percent and 26 percent, respectively, from the third season averages for each episode.
Seven episodes remain in the current season. The show airs Tuesdays at 10/9c.
"Sons of Anarchy"
Rapper Collapses During Concert
Tone Loc
These are difficult times for rappers' health. First Rick Ross suffered not one, but two seizures Friday while traveling to a concert in Memphis. Then, on Saturday, Tone Loc collapsed during a performance in Atlanta.
Loc's manager told TheWrap that the rapper -- real name, Anthony Terrell Smith -- "is exhausted after performing many shows in the last few months." After a brief hospitalization, however, the "Wild Thing" and "Funky Cold Medina" star "is fine now."
This isn't the first time that Smith, 45, has succumbed to tour fatigue. In 2009, the rapper collapsed during a Pensacola, Fla., performance. At the time, his manager said that flight delays and heat caused the collapse. In December 2010, Loc was arrested on suspicion of DUI in Los Angeles, though the manager told TMZ that the incident was due to a seizure Smith had suffered.
Earlier this month, Smith pleaded no contest to domestic violence and weapons charges, stemming from an alleged June incident with the mother of one of his children. He received one day in county jail, three years' probation, plus community service and anger-management classes.
Tone Loc
YouTube Channel Restored After Porn Hack
'Sesame Street'
Hackers broke into the official YouTube channel for "Sesame Street," inserting pornographic videos in place of clips from the children's show.
Google pulled the channel offline within 20 minutes of the apparent hack, the Next Web noted--though that interval was long enough for some videos to be indexed in search results for Sesame Street on YouTube.
By Monday afternoon, the program's YouTube channel--which has more than 150,000 subscribers--was restored.
It's not the first time "Sesame Street" has made media news on The Cutline. In August, the show released a statement asserting Bert and Ernie were not gay
'Sesame Street'
Calls Benny The Rat A Nazi
Susan Sarandon
Actress and social activist Susan Sarandon was reported to have called Pope Benedict a Nazi during a public discussion at a U.S. film festival in New York, provoking criticism from both Catholic and Jewish groups.
The movie star, who won an Oscar for her role in the 1995 anti-death penalty film "Dead man Walking" actress, said she had sent a copy of the book on which the movie is based to the pope.
"The last one. Not this Nazi one we have now," she was reported as saying by New York newspaper Newsday.
The remark was made on Saturday in an interview conducted by fellow actor Bob Balaban about Sarandon's career that was part of the Hamptons Film Festival.
Newsday said Balaban gently chided Sarandon for the remark but she repeated it.
Susan Sarandon
"
Fox Rupert News and Fox Rupert Business"-StyleMemo
Here's a novel idea: Fox Business Network should focus on covering business news.
At least that's what Kevin Magee, executive vice president of the News Corp-owned cable news network, is urging his staff to do.
Unhappy with Fox Business' focus on politics, Magee fired off a memo to employees reminding them that the network was not created to be a light version of its sister Fox News Channel.
"I've been asked to remind you all again that they are separate channels and the more we make FBN look like FNC the more of a disservice we do to ourselves," Magee said in the memo dated October 5, carrying the subject line "Fox News and Fox Business."
Memo
Fired Brother Sues Hustler
Jimmy Flynt
The estranged brother of Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt is suing him in Ohio for $20 million, saying he was wrongly fired from his job at Flynt's pornography company.
Jimmy Flynt says his brother stopped paying him his $250,000 annual salary in 2009 as part of an effort to squeeze him out of the business.
Jimmy Flynt is seeking at least $20 million in compensation and damages in the federal lawsuit filed last week in Cincinnati.
In May, a federal judge ruled that Larry Flynt is the sole owner of his pornography company and his brother isn't entitled to half the business. The judge said Jimmy Flynt provided no evidence he was ever a partner in the business.
Jimmy Flynt
Sues Kanye West, Jay-Z
Syl Johnson
Kanye West and Jay-Z have hit a bum note with one songwriter who claims they lifted his material without permission.
The two hip hop moguls are being sued by musician Syl Johnson, who claims in a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Illinois Friday alleging that West and Jay-Z sampled his 1967 song "Different Strokes" for a tune on their recent collaboration "Watch the Throne."
According to Johnson's suit, the pair had first solicited permission to sample "Different Strokes" on the song "The Joy" for West's album "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," but were shot down, and the song was left off the album. The tune ended up on "Watch the Throne," which was released in August.
According to the suit, the defendants claim they received permission to sample the song from an entity called the Numero Uno Group, which has never had any authorization to license the tune.
Syl Johnson
Museum Unconvinced By New Death Theory
Vincent van Gogh
Two American authors believe Vincent van Gogh was fatally shot by two teenagers and did not die from self-inflicted wounds, but the new theory won a skeptical reception Monday from experts at the museum dedicated to the 19th century Dutch master.
A book by Pulitzer prize-winning authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, "Van Gogh, The Life," concludes that Van Gogh, who suffered chronic depression, claimed on his deathbed to have shot himself to protect the boys.
"Covering up his own murder," said Naifeh in an interview broadcast Sunday on the U.S. network CBS's "60 Minutes."
Leo Jansen, curator of the Van Gogh Museum and editor of the artist's letters, said the biography is a "great book," but experts have doubts about the authors' theory of his death in 1890.
Vincent van Gogh
Pulls Out Of Dubai Restaurant
Gordon Ramsay
Celebrity chef and TV personality Gordon Ramsay is saying goodbye to Dubai.
The famously foul-mouthed Briton's company said by email Monday that his consultancy deal with Verre restaurant in the Gulf city-state is coming to an end.
Gordon Ramsay Holdings says it scrapped the deal after a regular review of commercial operations. It didn't elaborate, though a number of Ramsay's eateries have taken substantial financial losses.
Verre opened in the Hilton Dubai Creek hotel in 2001. It was Ramsay's first international restaurant.
Gordon Ramsay
New Life
Network News
There's new life in broadcast television's evening news shows, in part because of forces such as 24-hour cable news that were once thought ready to kill the genre off.
Despite repeated death knells for the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts, the networks have just completed a TV season where all three grew their audiences for the first time since 2001-02, when terrorists struck and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars began. The growth is continuing for the first few weeks of this season.
After years in which the network broadcasts seemed interchangeable, they now have sharp contrasts that go beyond the faces of anchors Brian Williams, Diane Sawyer and Scott Pelley. Each of the newscasts, which are collectively seen by more than 20 million people each weekday, changed its top executives over the past couple of months.
News is an obvious factor in audience growth, and the Japanese tsunami, Arab spring, debt ceiling debate and teetering economy all attracted interest. But busy and not-so-busy news periods fluctuate all the time.
Many pundits believed evening newscasts would become obsolete with the availability of news 24 hours a day on cable TV and the Internet. Instead, the curating function of the evening news has become more vital.
Network News
Early Letter Offers Drummer Tryout
Paul McCartney
Somewhere, an aging drummer (identity unknown) is probably still kicking himself.
A newly discovered letter found folded in a book at a Liverpool yard sale has shed new light on the Beatles' early days, revealing that Paul McCartney offered an audition to a mystery drummer in 1960, just a few days before the band left for a formative two-month gig in Hamburg, Germany.
The letter, to be auctioned next month by Christie's, has surprised Beatles scholars. It was written two years before the band bounced drummer Pete Best in favor of Ringo Starr, who arrived just in time to help the Beatles' conquer first England and then the world, earning untold millions along the way.
The Aug. 12, 1960 letter handwritten by McCartney offers an audition to someone who had advertised their availability in the Liverpool Echo newspaper four days earlier. The unsigned ad said simply: "Drummer_Young_Free."
McCartney, who was then playing guitar in the band while the late Stuart Sutcliffe handled bass guitar, offered the drummer an audition with the caveat that if he joins the band he must be ready to travel almost immediately to Hamburg. The Beatles honed their musical chops playing at low-rent clubs in the German's city's famed red-light district.
Paul McCartney
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