"Canadian Flyer"

Canada's scored six tries and capitalized on an opposition red card Saturday to rout its U.S. rivals 41-18 and clinch a berth in the 2011 World Cup.

(AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Edmonton Sun, Amber Bracken)

"candlelight vigil"

Thousands of fans of Elvis Presley from around the world, some wearing his trademark outfits and thick sideburns, made their way to his Graceland estate Monday for a candlelight vigil ahead of the 34th anniversary of the singer's death on Tuesday.

Droves of fans trek each year to Memphis to remember Elvis, who died on Aug. 16, 1977. Among the first in line was 60-year-old Joe Makowski, who claims he saw Elvis in concert 81 times, and his girlfriend, Pamela Hembree. A New Jersey native who owns four of Elvis' concert-worn scarves and has attended several vigils, he said it was time to introduce Hembree to the Elvis Week experience honoring the life and career of the rock 'n' roll star.


"I get to meet new fans and meet new people, so that's why I line up here early in the day," said Makowski, who went to Las Vegas twice a year between 1971 and 1976 to see Elvis perform. "The biggest thing I get out of it is seeing the young fans that weren't even born until years after he passed away."

This year, fans have something else to commemorate. It was 55 years ago — 1956 — when his first two albums were released.

To mark Elvis' breakout year, music producer Ernst Jorgensen and his team have assembled a five-CD box set called "Young Man With the Big Beat," which RCA/Legacy will begin selling Sept. 27. It includes the first two Presley albums, rare live recordings, outtakes and interviews, plus an 80-page book.

—Associated Press

"Vegas To Implode"

The Harmon tower has been plagued by construction problems, lawsuits and a struggling economy. MGM Resorts now is asking to implode it. (K.M. Cannon, Las Vegas Review-Journal / August 16, 2011)

"The House of Davids"

There are many ways you could list the well-known white house in Hancock Park that is on sale for $2.1 million:

It has a pool, a sauna and a steam room.

A home theater with a bar.

Six bedrooms and six baths.

Nineteen Michelangelo's Davids lined up along the curve of its front lawn.

Like the statues? Keep them. Don't like them? Ditch them.

Norwood Young couldn't care less.

The House of Davids became a pop landmark almost the instant Young startled his sedate street by putting the white statues up on pedestals.

Fourteen years later, cars still slow as they pass. Double-decker tour buses lumber by so tourists can snap photos.

Young used to love turning heads — lighting up the lawn, throwing over-the-top theme parties, dressing his naked giant slayers in long red Santa hats for Christmas and "Thriller" jackets in tribute to the late King of Pop.

But now he is done with the Davids, he says.

As long as the people who buy the house pay him, so be it if they strip it back to basic ranch.

"I wouldn't give a rat's behind what they did," says this man who has been singing professionally all his life and has grown tired of being known not for his voice but for his house.

"some nipping and tucking"

The Statue of Liberty is showing her age, and plans to have a little work done. She celebrates her 125th birthday in October with all the fanfare befitting such a grande dame, and then will close to the public for a year while the National Park Service does some nipping and tucking.

However, don't panic if you're traveling to the area in the near future. Only the interior of the statue will be closed to the public. "Don't worry, Liberty Island will remain OPEN so a visit should remain part of your travel plans," says the National Park Service website, bold and caps included.

Perhaps that won't disrupt too many travel plans. The National Park Service says that only 30% of visitors make the reservation required to examine the interior. The rest limit themselves to exploring Liberty Island.

The park's website details plans for the $27.25-million makeover: "When completed, the interior will have new stairways and elevators. Upgrades to water and mechanical systems will also be addressed. Since the work is being done inside, views of Lady Liberty from land and sea will remain unobstructed."

"an egg floating on water"

The National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) is an opera house in Beijing, People’s Republic of China. The Centre, an ellipsoid dome of titanium and glass surrounded by an artificial lake, seats 5,452 people in three halls and is almost 12,000 m² in size. The exterior of the theater is a titanium accented glass dome that is completely surrounded by a man-made lake. It is said to look like an egg floating on water, or a water drop. It was designed as an iconic feature, something that would be immediately recognizable.

"the best Formula One driver who ever lived"

"Senna" is a documentary with the pace of a thriller, a story of motors and machines that is beyond compelling because of the intensely human story it tells.

Brazil's Ayrton Senna was the boy genius of Formula One racing, winner of three world championships before dying in a crash in 1994 at age 34, a driver current and former Formula One racers recently voted the greatest who ever lived

But if all Senna could do was race, this wouldn't be much of a story. Though he could drive like the devil, Senna was a spiritual person who believed deeply and profoundly in a higher power. A philosophical mystic with a jewel thief's nerves and a poet's sensitivity, not to mention killer good looks, Senna was an altogether remarkable individual. And a deeply contradictory one.

On the one hand, Senna was a sensitive, articulate man who wore his heart on his racing sleeve, someone your own heart can't help but go out to as he tries to maintain a sense of decency and dignity in cut-throat surroundings. But Senna was also the fiercest competitor imaginable, someone who lived to win and never hesitated to push cars beyond their designed capabilities. Triumphing at Formula One, he tells one interviewer, is "something so strong, like a drug. Once you experience it, you search for it all the time."

More than anything, Senna was a driver who wouldn't play the game, a moral person in an immoral world who loathed the politics and the injustices he felt he saw all around him. It's not for nothing that "Senna" begins with the driver talking about his teenage years as a go-kart driver. "It was pure driving, pure racing," he says, looking back with a kind of longing. "There was no money, no politics, it was real racing."

(To read the complete review by Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Film Critic, click on the heading above.)

"rethinking the way it does night life"

Perch is a new rooftop bar and restaurant that's making downtown L.A. rethink the way it does night life. Unlike downtown's most famous rooftop bar — the ostentatious poolside lounge crowning the Standard Hotel — Perch doesn't have a pool or red Astroturf or gaggles of scantily clad partiers. It doesn't have a million-dollar lighting system or a make-believe speak-easy either.

What Perch does have is a fine cocktail program, an impressive selection of French wines and spirits, a French-inspired dinner menu, panoramic views, live music and a palpable lack of pretension. This is a place where you go to relax in style — either inside on a plush blue sofa, or outside on a vintage, powder-coated, wrought-iron patio chair — sipping a Maverick & Goose (gin, lemon, simple syrup, Lillet and muddled gooseberries), sucking on a succulent frog leg and watching the sun set over Pershing Square.

Not there yet

US military scientists lost contact with a hypersonic glider nine minutes into its inaugural test flight, a defence research agency said recently. The unmanned Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 is designed to fly through the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere at speeds of up to Mach 20, providing the US military with a possible platform for striking targets anywhere on the planet with conventional weapons. The HTV-2 was launched aboard a Minotaur IV rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, according to the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Truly a WINNER in every way!!!

Michael Jeffrey Jordan (born February 17, 1963) is a former American professional basketball player, active businessman, and majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats. His biography on the National Basketball Association (NBA) website states, "By acclamation, Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time."[1] Jordan was one of the most effectively marketed athletes of his generation and was instrumental in popularizing the NBA around the world in the 1980s and 1990s.

After a standout career at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a member of the Tar Heels' National Championship team in 1982, Jordan joined the NBA's Chicago Bulls in 1984. He quickly emerged as a league star, entertaining crowds with his prolific scoring. His leaping ability, illustrated by performing slam dunks from the free throw line in slam dunk contests, earned him the nicknames "Air Jordan" and "His Airness". He also gained a reputation for being one of the best defensive players in basketball.[2] In 1991, he won his first NBA championship with the Bulls, and followed that achievement with titles in 1992 and 1993, securing a "three-peat". Although Jordan abruptly retired from basketball at the beginning of the 1993–94 NBA season to pursue a career in baseball, he rejoined the Bulls in 1995 and led them to three additional championships (1996, 1997, and 1998) as well as an NBA-record 72 regular-season wins in the 1995–96 NBA season. Jordan retired for a second time in 1999, but returned for two more NBA seasons from 2001 to 2003 as a member of the Washington Wizards.

Jordan's individual accolades and accomplishments include five MVP awards, ten All-NBA First Team designations, nine All-Defensive First Team honors, fourteen NBA All-Star Game appearances, three All-Star Game MVP awards, ten scoring titles, three steals titles, six NBA Finals MVP awards, and the 1988 NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award. He holds the NBA records for highest career regular season scoring average (30.12 points per game) and highest career playoff scoring average (33.45 points per game). In 1999, he was named the greatest North American athlete of the 20th century by ESPN, and was second to Babe Ruth on the Associated Press's list of athletes of the century. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009.

“Dustbin of History"

The leering visage of Moammar Kadafi, surrounded by rats made of plaster, stares down at visitors to a new art exhibit on the Benghazi waterfront.

The Kadafi caricature stands 12 feet tall. It depicts the Libyan leader as a derelict imprisoned in a 15-foot-high trash bin and deluged with garbage.

Titled “Dustbin of History,” the work is the centerpiece of a new art exhibit sanctioned by the rebel movement fighting to overthrow Kadafi after 41 years of suffocating rule.

“Kadafi is heading to the trash bin soon, God willing,” said the artwork’s creator, a long-haired, woolly-bearded former underground artist named Ali Wakwak.

Part art and part agitprop, the “Crimes of Kadafi” exhibit encapsulates the contempt and dread Libyans in the rebel-controlled east hold for the besieged strongman in Tripoli. Unveiled July 18, the show also reflects the burgeoning spirit of liberation and openness that has engulfed Benghazi since an uprising drove Kadafi’s security forces from eastern Libya in mid-February.

"her music seems timeless"

The Patsy Cline Historic House is set to open Aug. 2 as a memorial to the singer, giving fans a glimpse into the early period of her brief but highly celebrated country music career, reports the AP.

The house is located at 608 S. Kent St. in Winchester, Virginia. Cline, whose real name is Virginia “Ginny” Patterson Hensley, lived in the home from her mid-teens to mid-20s, as she became one of music’s most influential stars. She was the first female solo artist inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Julie Fudge, Cline’s daughter, told the AP, “The fact that her music seems timeless brings a whole new group in every generation that keeps her alive. Her career was a small amount of years, and she had lots of accolades, but I don’t think she imagined the things that would come after she died.”

"China's new aircraft carrier"

These aircraft carriers look formidable and of ultra modern design. There
are reports the 1st Chinese aircraft carrier is under construction and could
enter service around 2015 or earlier. It won't be long before we see the
real thing on the sea.

Denizen of "Dark Shadows"

In "Dark Shadows," Lara Parker played the vengeful witch, Angelique Bouchard
who had turned Barnabas into a vampire.

"an icon of American popular culture"

Jonathan Frid's career in drama began when he first "offered his soul" to the theater as a young boy at a preparatory school in Ontario, Canada. Following his graduation from McMaster University, he attended London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and later earned a Master's Degree in Directing from the Yale School of Drama. Mr. Frid was a leading actor in English and Canadian repertory and went on to work in many of the most celebrated regional theaters in the United States, including the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, and the American Shakespeare Festival under the direction of John Houseman, performing with Katharine Hepburn in "Much Ado About Nothing". He has appeared in major roles on-and-off Broadway, in such productions as "Roar Like A Dove", "Murder in the Cathedral" and "Wait Until Dark". But, it was Mr. Frid's portrayal of a complex, conflicted vampire on ABC-TV's daytime drama series "Dark Shadows" (1966) (co-starring with Joan Bennett) and in the subsequent motion picture House of Dark Shadows (1970) that earned him a place as an icon of American popular culture.

"Nom de Plume"

"The obvious trouble with pen names … even with the most inspired and impressive ones, was that they somehow failed to convey truly the full extent of one's literary genius," said Romain Gary, the great French filmmaker and novelist, among other things.. Here Gary, a.k.a. Émile Ajar, was referring to his trouble picking out a pseudonym, one that he felt suited him well enough, considering the fame he expected.

Literary genius, secret lives, alter egos, publishing qualms, society's attitudes and more are explored by Carmela Ciuraru as impetus and inspiration for pseudonyms in her new book, "Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms."

"Dark Shadows"

Kathryn Leigh Scott describes her cameo in Tim Burton's feature version of the cult-favorite, 1966-71 ABC daytime soap-vampire romance "Dark Shadows" as the film's "ah-ha" moment.

Scott starred in four roles on the influential soap — the precursor of such popular vampire TV series as "True Blood" and the "Twilight" books and movies. She played the waitress from the wrong side of the tracks Maggie Evans, who falls in love with a tortured vampire Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid).

"Ciro's — one of the most glamorous nightclubs of the golden age of Hollywood"

The Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard has been serving up laughs since 1972. But before that, it was home to Ciro's — one of the most glamorous nightclubs of the golden age of Hollywood. Entrepreneur William Wilkerson opened the club in January 1940 and it quickly became the place to be seen. Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart and Lana Turner were among those who frequented Ciro's. Even a young John F. Kennedy visited the boîte after World War II. Such greats as Cab Calloway, Sammy Davis Jr., Judy Garland, Peggy Lee and Mae West performed there. During the 1960s, it was transformed into a rock club.

"Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness"

"Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness" is a beautifully made documentary film that sets the record straight in a thoughtful, incisive way. Director Joseph Dorman has successfully combined artfully chosen archival material and perceptive interviews with some of the best thinkers in the Yiddish world, including academics Dan Miron, David Roskies and Ruth Wisse; translator Hillel Halkin; the National Yiddish Book Center's Aaron Lansky; and author Bel Kaufman, Sholem Aleichem's 100-year-old granddaughter.

The result is more than an examination of the contradictory life of the celebrated humorist and storyteller, it's a compelling cinematic look at the complex world of Eastern European Jews. Those who remember Dorman's last film, the excellent "Arguing the World," an examination of such midcentury New York Jewish thinkers as Daniel Bell and Irving Howe, will not be surprised.

Churchill's 'secret agent'

Robert Maloubier likes to tell people he is a retired accountant. That he studied finance in college, that he had a quiet life, that he stopped working at 66.

He can barely get the last words out without a chuckle that pulls up the ends of his bushy white mustache so it curls around his cheekbones.

"Oh, I love doing that," he says with a satisfied sigh. "Nobody knows about me here."

The truth is Maloubier, 88, never went to college. It's also hard to say whether he ever really retired, though he admits that when he turned 80 he had to stop rollerblading and flying his plane.

As far as a quiet life goes, he hasn't had one and he hopes it stays that way.

There are a few other things people in this quiet suburb west of Paris don't know about him: He is trained in close combat, sabotage, guerrilla tactics, parachuting and underwater warfare.

Maloubier is one of the few surviving French agents from Winston Churchill's "secret army," the Special Operations Executive created in 1940 with orders to "put Europe ablaze" and defeat Nazi forces behind enemy lines.

The British army awarded him the rank of captain and the Distinguished Service Order for his derring-do after he parachuted into his occupied homeland in 1943 and again in 1944. Maloubier's wartime feats include leading a band of French resistance fighters who blew up seven bridges in 24 hours to stall the advancing German army.

Nearly 70 years later, most French still don't know much about the role the British played in the resistance in their country.