Salon.com > John Rogers

Schwarzenegger back, this time as think tank guru

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 14:21:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES (AP) — He's been a governor, a movie star and the world's greatest body builder, but Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't done yet.

The man who never tires of telling people he'll be back returned again Monday, this time as a global policy wonk and statesman dedicated to leading America into what he calls a new post-partisan era.

Schwarzenegger, in a dark suit, crisp white shirt and red tie, appeared at the University of Southern California to officially launch the USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy with a symposium featuring some of the most notable names in politics and entertainment.

For the former Republican governor, the symposium marked a sudden public re-emergence after leaving office nearly two years ago with a mixed record that he suggested Monday accomplished about half of what he had set out to do.

He's hoping that through the institute, created with a $20 million commitment from Schwarzenegger and others, he can accomplish the rest, tackling issues such as hunger, health care and global warming.

He'll also take an active role in teaching at USC. The institute's academic director, Nancy Staudt, referred to him several times as Professor Schwarzenegger.

Screen siren Jane Russell dies

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 15:30:00 +0000

She was the voluptuous pin-up girl who set a million male hearts to pounding during World War II, the favorite movie star of a generation of young men long before she'd made a movie more than a handful of them had ever seen.

Such was the stunning beauty of Jane Russell, and the marketing skills of the man who discovered her, the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes.

Russell, surrounded by family members, died Monday at her home in the central coast city of Santa Maria. Her death from respiratory failure came 70 years after Hughes had put her on the path to stardom with his controversial Western "The Outlaw." She was 89.

Although she had all but abandoned Hollywood after the 1960s for a quieter life, her daughter-in-law Etta Waterfield said Russell remained active until just a few weeks ago when her health began to fail. Until then, she was active with her church, charities that were close to her heart and as a member of a singing group that made occasional appearances around Santa Maria.

"She always said 'I'm going to die in the saddle, I'm not going to sit at home and become an old woman,'" Waterfield told The Associated Press on Monday. "And that's exactly what she did, she died in the saddle."

College classrooms replace stages for rock stars

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 13:39:00 +0000

They may fall off the pop charts, some might even lose the muse. But these days old rock stars need not worry about fading away, not when there's a college classroom nearby.

Rock's gangster of love himself, Steve Miller, created some buzz recently when he became an artist-in-residence at the prestigious University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music. But it turns out the guy who famously proclaimed, "I'm a joker, I'm a smoker, I'm a midnight toker" wasn't nearly the first guitar-slinger to move from the stage to the classroom.

Mark Volman, who co-founded the Turtles and later played with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, runs the entertainment studies department at Nashville's Belmont University these days when he isn't out on the road singing "Happy Together." Lamont Dozier, one third of the legendary songwriting team Holland-Dozier-Holland, which created hits for everyone from Phil Collins to the Supremes, lectures on his craft at USC. Around the country, everyone from punk rockers to doo-wop harmonizers are holding down teaching positions at big-name universities.

Huntington Library gives Nazi papers to National Archives

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:35:00 +0000

Documents that historians say laid the legal groundwork for the execution of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust were turned over to the National Archives on Wednesday.

The private, nonprofit Huntington Library formally handed the Nuremberg Laws to archive officials during a news conference at The Huntington's sprawling complex of libraries, museums and botanical gardens in this Los Angeles suburb.

The Huntington has had charge of the four pages since Gen. George Patton deposited them there at the end of World War II. Patton, who disobeyed orders when he spirited them out of Germany, grew up in San Marino and was friends with Huntington officials.

U.S. Archivist David Ferriero said he hoped to put the Nuremberg Laws on display in Washington by Sept. 15, the 75th anniversary of their signing by Adolf Hitler and other Nazi officials.

"It's important to me as the archivist to have these on display from the 15th of September, the day they were signed," Ferriero said.

The papers, which among other things rescinded the citizenship of German Jews and forbid them to marry non-Jews, are the only original pieces of Nuremberg trial evidence missing from the collection, said National Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper.

Rescued teen sailor’s family denies plan for reality show

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:42:00 +0000

A spokesman for the family of the California girl who was rescued from the Indian Ocean while trying to sail around the world says the family has no current plans for a reality TV show.

Jeff Casher says he spoke with Abby Sunderland's father Monday morning and Laurence Sunderland says such a show was discussed last year when her brother Zac sailed around the world, but it never came about.

Magnetic Entertainment lists plans for the show on its website, but officials from the company did not return calls Monday.

The New York Post reported Monday that Laurence Sunderland signed a contract for a show weeks after his daughter set sail.

Casher says Abby Sunderland brought cameras on her voyage. The 16-year-old started sending an emergency signal from her storm-battered boat Thursday. She was rescued two days later.

Will porn, PETA be octomom’s latest saviors?

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:27:50 +0000

Nadya Suleman's octuplets have brought her plenty of fame, but fortune appears to be another story.

Her father, Ed Doud, has defaulted on a $450,000 balloon payment on a half-million dollar house he bought last year for the family to live in, mortgage holder Amer Haddadin said Wednesday. Haddadin told The Associated Press he plans to file foreclosure papers in court within days if he doesn't get his money.

Although Suleman's lawyer, Jeff Czech, said earlier this week his client's father was hoping to work something out, he was blunt when it came to the balloon payment: "Mr. Doud at this moment doesn't have $450,000 to pay off," he said.

In a brief e-mail Wednesday, he added that he was negotiating with Haddadin's attorney for more time to refinance.

Not that Suleman doesn't have the opportunity to raise the money quickly, although not in ways she would want to.

Steven Hirsch, co-chairman of Vivid Entertainment, one of the world's largest purveyors of adult films, announced this week that his company would pay off Suleman's mortgage if she would make a porn film.

Hirsch assured it would be, well, as tasteful as those things can be with her input on male co-stars and script.

Rough economy? Just ask unemployed Spider-Man

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:55:00 +0000

Time to dust off that resume, Spider-Man. You're fired!

Don't fret, the web-slinger will still be keeping New York City safe from Venom and Carnage and any number of other dastardly villains he's tangled with over the years. But beginning Wednesday, he's going to have to do it between trips to the unemployment line.

That's the day Peter Parker, Spider-Man's nice guy alter-ego, hears the words, "You're fired" from his cranky, long-suffering boss, Mayor J. Jonah Jameson. Worse still, Jameson not only sacks Parker, who makes his living as a photojournalist, he blacklists him with every news organization in town.

This of course raises all kinds of interesting questions:

-- How will Parker maintain his Spider-Man costumes? Dry-cleaning bills alone must run to several hundred dollars a year.

-- How will he keep buying the stuff he uses to spin those industrial-strength webs needed to hop from building to building? Surely he doesn't pick that up at the 99 Cents Store.

-- Where is his next meal coming from? Would he be reduced to spinning webs outside supermarkets and trapping shopping carts in them?

"Because we still want to sell comic books, I can't answer those questions," laughs Joe Quesada, editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics, which reveals the web spinner's latest crisis in Issue No. 623.