Month: June 2017

While it’s unclear how much the rest of the country is eagerly awaiting Thursday’s testimony from former FBI Director James Comey, for Washingtonians, the event is must-see TV, prompting some bars to open as early to host viewing parties.

And yes, one bar, Shaw’s Tavern, will be serving a special “covfefe” cocktail, named after President Donald Trump’s mysterious Twitter typo.

Rob Heim, general manager of Shaw’s Tavern, told People magazine that he got the idea after a friend invited him over to watch the testimony. Since he had to work, he thought why not host a viewing party at the bar.

“I remember I was visiting my mom at the time and she said, ‘Who would watch that?’ And I said, ‘In D.C., people would watch it.’ But I was shocked by how much interest we got in just a couple hours.”

The bar will also offer FBI-themed food such as the FBI sandwich (fried chicken, bacon and iceberg lettuce) and the FBI breakfast (French toast, bacon and ice cream).

Another bar, aptly called The Partisan, will open early and offer themed cocktails, including “The Last Word” and “Drop the Bomb.”

Duffy’s Irish Pub will have another version of the “Covfefe cocktail.”

The Capital Lounge, which normally opens at 4 p.m., will open at 9 a.m. so that Comey watchers can get an early start.

Comey’s hearing is set to start at 10 a.m. local time and is expected to cover conversations between Comey and President Trump about Russia’s meddling in the election and what, if any, role was played by former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

If you don’t want to wait, Comey released his prepared remarks Wednesday.

Of course, not everyone is interested in the event, prompting one bar, The Pug, to host a party free of news about the testimony.
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A replica of an Assyrian statue destroyed by Islamic State militants in Iraq in 2014 will soar over tourists in London’s Trafalgar Square beginning in March, courtesy of a vision from American artist Michael Rakowitz.

 

The 15-foot high statue of an lamassu — a human-headed winged bull — reflects the “mass migration that’s happened out of Iraq and Syria in the past few years,” and is a “kind of placeholder for those lives that can’t be reconstructed and for those people who have not yet found refuge,” Rakowitz said in an interview at his Evanston, Illinois, studio.

 

His sculpture is a continuation of “The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist” series, a decade-long recreation of nearly 700 of the over 7,000 archaeological artifacts still missing after being looted, stolen or declared missing from the National Museum of Iraq. It’s a project Rakowitz predicts will outlive him and his studio, as thousands of artifacts are still missing and more are being lost every day in archaeological sites throughout Iraq and Syria.

 

Using databases from the University of Chicago and Interpol to get exact dimensions of missing works, he and his team work with recycled Middle Eastern food packaging and Arabic newspapers to create versions of the original pieces.

 

Rakowitz, one of two winners of the Fourth Plinth competition that grants winning artists the right to exhibit a contemporary art work in Trafalgar Square for about 18 months, says he hopes his lamassu sculpture will draw attention to some of the staggering human and cultural costs of ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Syria.

 

London’s Fourth Plinth was erected in Trafalgar Square 1841 in for a never-completed equestrian statue. Since 1999, it has been occupied by a series of modern artworks.

 

Rakowitz felt fate intervened as he was putting together his submission.

 

“When the City of London sent out its prompt inviting me to propose something, it said that the plinth itself measured 14 feet in length and I was simultaneously doing research on the lamassu that had been destroyed by ISIS in Nineveh and that was exactly 14 feet. So, it seemed as though that is what had to go there,” said Rakowitz, a professor of art at Northwestern University.

 

His latter-day lamassu will be created out of between 3,000 and 4,000 pressed empty Iraqi date syrup cans, highlighting the once-thriving Iraqi date industry that’s been decimated by decades of war.

 

Lost art works, along with the cultures they represent, are a life-long obsession for the 43-year-old grandson of Iraqi Jewish emigres. Generations of Rakowitz’s family embraced their cultural identity even after being forced to flee Baghdad in the 1940s. Being an Iraqi Jew was presented to Rakowitz as “something normal, but [also] something that had tragically disappeared.”

 

Rakowitz felt as if his “entire art history had collapsed,” after hearing that the Taliban destroyed Afghanistan’s Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001. That sense of loss was further compounded two years later when watching video of the looting of Baghdad’s Museum of Iraq.

 

“It didn’t matter if you were for the war or against the war,” he said. “This was something that everyone could agree upon was unacceptable and tragic and it was a problem for all humanity, not just for Iraq.”

 

Claire Davies, the Metropolitan Museum’s assistant curator for modern and contemporary art from the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, said Rakowitz’s work connects the destruction “to what is happening outside of that space and to the people around that work of art.”

 

Rakowitz’s replica pieces have been acquired by major museums from around the world, including the British Museum, Davies said. The Metropolitan Museum currently has nine pieces from “The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist.” His work has also been widely exhibited in the Middle East.
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Bill Cosby’s chief accuser on Wednesday denied they had a romantic relationship before he allegedly drugged and assaulted her at his suburban Philadelphia home.

The defense resumed its cross-examination of Andrea Constand one day after she broke her long public silence about Cosby by testifying that the comedian gave her three blue pills and then violated her with his fingers in 2004 as she lay paralyzed, unable to tell him to stop.

Cosby lawyer Angela Agrusa suggested that Constand, a 44-year-old former employee of the basketball program at Temple University, once enjoyed a romantic dinner at Cosby’s home before the alleged assault.

“You were sitting by the fire. The room was dark. There was a nice mood …,”  Agrusa began, paraphrasing Constand’s 2005 statement to police.

“I don’t know what that means,” Constand said.

“The lights were dim and the fire was going,” the lawyer continued.

“I don’t really remember how dim the lights were, but I did have to eat my dinner,” Constand said.

Agrusa also spent a painstaking hour going over Constand’s phone records, hoping to show she changed her mind about the date she says Cosby assaulted her.

High-profile trustee

Cosby arrived at the courthouse Wednesday accompanied by actress Sheila Frazier, who starred with him in the 1978 comedy “California Suite.” Frazier was accompanied by her husband, John Atchison, a celebrity hairstylist whose clients include Cosby and his wife, Camille.

Cosby, 79, is charged with aggravated indecent assault. The comedian once dubbed America’s Dad could get 10 years in prison if convicted.

 

Constand managed the women’s basketball team at Temple, Cosby’s alma mater, while he was a high-profile trustee. She said on Tuesday that she felt her continued friendship with Cosby after the alleged assault was important to the school’s athletic department.

His lawyers have tried to poke holes in Constand’s story, citing differences between her courtroom testimony and the accounts she gave to police and in a lawsuit in 2005. The defense has argued the two had a romantic relationship, that Constand wasn’t incapacitated and that the sexual encounter was consensual.

Phone records

 

The defense has pointed out that phone records show Constand called Cosby 53 times after she says he assaulted her. Constand told the jury the calls mostly involved the women’s basketball team, especially around tournament time.

 

Before Tuesday, Constand had never spoken about Cosby in public, barred from doing so under the terms of a confidential settlement they reached in 2006. Her deposition from that lawsuit remains sealed.

 

Some 60 women have come forward to say Cosby sexually violated them, all but destroying his nice-guy image, but the statute of limitations for prosecution had run out in nearly every case. Constand’s case is the only one in which Cosby has been charged.

 

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are sexual assault victims unless they grant permission, which Constand has done.

 
…

As a child growing up poor in Tupelo, Mississippi, Elvis Presley promised his parents that one day he would earn a lot of money and use it to buy the family a big house.

He made good on that promise in 1957, when he bought Graceland for $102,500 in Memphis, Tennessee. The mansion, originally built in 1939, remains the centerpiece of the 5.6-hectare estate, although it has been considerably refurbished and embellished over the decades.

Elvis, his parents, wife Priscilla Presley, daughter Lisa Marie and a collection of friends and relatives that made up his entourage all lived in Graceland most of the time until Elvis’s sudden death in August 1977 at the age of 42.

The official cause of death was cardiac arrhythmia — a form of heart attack —but overuse of prescription drugs for years is widely believed to have been a major cause of his final illness, when his heartbeat became so erratic that Elvis fell unconscious and died in his private quarters. His father, Vernon Presley, had the autopsy report sealed from public view.

Funeral rites for Presley at Graceland commanded worldwide attention, with 80,000 mourners in attendance. His gravesite on the mansion grounds became a magnet for visitors.

Less than five years after Elvis’s death, Graceland was opened to the public on June 7, 1982.

“600,000 people visit Graceland annually,” said Libby Perry, a Graceland spokesman.

All these years later, do visitors report feeling Elvis’s presence at Graceland?

“Of course,” Perry said. “Just ask anyone who has visited.”
…

Every year, hundreds of thousands of tourists walk through Presley’s mansion, bought for $102,500.00 in 1957
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Chuck Berry did things his own way, right up to his final album, a 10-song set nearly four decades in the making.

 

The St. Louis native widely hailed as the father of rock ‘n’ roll announced plans for the album “CHUCK” in October on his 90th birthday. The music took on added poignancy when Berry died in March. The album will be released Friday.

 

It’s a fitting finale from the guitar master who melded blues, R&B and Country music into a sound that took over the 1950s, forever changing the cultural landscape. Some of the new songs, like “Wonderful Woman” and “Big Boys,” feature the same driving rhythm of his earliest hits like “Maybellene” and “Roll Over Beethoven.” In fact, one of the new songs, “Lady B. Goode,” offers the perspective of the woman left behind by his legendary “Johnny B. Goode.”

 

But Berry’s son, Charles Berry Jr., said his father did not set out to make a legacy album.

 

“I think this was just his next body of work, and it just took a lot longer than the other albums to get released,” Charles Berry Jr., 55, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

That’s an understatement. Jim Marsala, who played bass guitar in Berry’s band for 41 years, said Berry began working on new material soon after the release of his previous album, “Rock It,” in 1979.

 

Always marching to his own beat, Berry was in no particular hurry. For 10 years, he recorded songs, or riffs for songs, or whatever came to mind. All of the tracks were destroyed in a 1989 fire at a studio near his home in Wentzville, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb.

 

At that point, “he has nothing,” Charles Berry Jr. said. “So, he builds another studio and goes back to work, re-creating and creating new music.”

 

In the meantime, Berry continued to perform, including monthly shows for nearly two decades at Blueberry Hill, a venue in another St. Louis suburb, University City, until age 88. Marsala directed the band, Charles Berry Jr. played guitar, and the always unpredictable frontman commanded the stage, taking his bandmates on a nightly trip they could never anticipate.

 

“The show was completely ad-libbed,” Marsala said. “You never knew what was coming next. We usually started out with ‘Roll Over Beethoven,’ ‘School Days,’ and then ‘Sweet Little Sixteen,’ and then from there it was whatever he felt like playing.”

 

Marsala made sure he stood to Berry’s left, better to see where Berry’s hands were on the neck of his guitar “so I knew what key he was in. So when he would do his four-bar intro I had hand signals. I would flash to the keyboard player so he would know what key we were in. And we’d come in on the fifth bar. It worked great.”

 

Charles Berry Jr. smiled as he recalled those shows.

 

“He’d be up onstage and just start doing stuff,” he said. “And it’d be, ‘OK, let’s just follow him wherever he’s going.”’

 

“CHUCK” was a family affair. Charles Berry Jr. plays guitar, as does his own son, Charles Edward Berry III, who turns 23 this week. Ingrid Berry-Clay, one of Chuck’s three daughters, sings and plays harmonica.

 

She sings along with her dad on “Darlin’,” a Country-tinged ballad that resonates as a final message to his children.

 

“Darlin’, your father’s growing older each year,” Berry sings. “Strands of gray are showing bolder/Come here and lay your head upon my shoulder/My dear, the time is passing fast away.”

 

Typical of Berry, the lyrics of “CHUCK” are at times poetic, at other times playful. “Big Boys” harkens to his earlier odes to teenage cravings. “The girls wanna stay and the boys wanna play/So let’s rock ‘n’ roll `til the break of day,” he sings.

 

But in the closing song, “Eyes of Man,” Berry warns philosophically of worshipping false idols.

 

“So be the temples men have cherished/Crumble in ruins to rot and rust/Low lies each pillar and arch to perish/Doomed to decay and rot to dust.”

 

Berry’s impact on music was evident, said Joe Edwards, the owner of Blueberry Hill and a close friend of Berry’s.

 

“But the fact that he changed culture around the world by bringing black kids and white kids together through music was an even greater accomplishment, perhaps,” Edwards said. “It was just unbelievable the influence he had.”
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A rusted fragment of the battleship USS Arizona sunk at Pearl Harbor, a woman’s munitions plant uniform and ration books all tell the complex story of life on the homefront in a new exhibit at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

“Salute to the Home Front,” which opens Saturday, explores the bitter fight about entering the war, racial and gender prejudice, and the development of the atomic bomb.

Museum President and CEO Nick Mueller said most of the museum’s 6-acre campus shows how the war was won on the battlefield but the new permanent exhibit explains “why it was fought and how it was won on the homefront.”

The 10,000-square-foot exhibit begins with the years after World War I. The peace treaty that ended the war in 1918 was “punitive and did not really solve the social and cultural ills” that led to the war, according Owen Glendening, the museum’s associate vice president for education and access.

“With democracy and capitalism under question, the rise of authoritarian regimes really shook the world,” he said.

Gas masks for children

Among the artifacts are British gas masks for children — one that might fit a 5-year-old and a much bigger one designed to hold an infant from head to waist. Gas had been a major weapon of World War I, and people feared that gas bombs might be dropped in civilian areas.

“Fortunately, it never happened, but the population was scared stiff,” Glendenning said.

Headlines and newsreels show the strident debate between U.S. isolationists and internationalists, which ended when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

Survivors’ accounts of that attack are among more than 50 videotaped oral histories interspersed throughout the exhibit.

“The signature of this museum is to engage people in personal stories. … We hear from survivors of Pearl Harbor, people on Main Street USA. … We hear first-hand stories about people who went into factories or into the service to fight,” Mueller said.

‘Victory Begins at Home’

The exhibit’s Main Street USA has a newsstand, a theater marquee and a store window filled with propagandistic wares such as Victory bobby pins and a charm bracelet of military service insignia.

Within the picket fence outside two rooms representing a 1940s-style home, one wall is covered with a photo of a victory garden. Nearby are a real hubcap and other metal items for a scrap drive.

Inside the kitchen, the shelves display pamphlets with titles such as “Victory Begins at Home!: Recipes to Match Your Sugar Ration” and “Health for Victory Club Meal-Planning Guide.” Pull open kitchen drawers and you see items including ration books, matchbooks and an icebag.

Map of the war

A living-room wall displays a framed map: “Esso War Map II: Invasion Edition.” It’s designed, an introductory statement says, so people can “follow the strategy of the Allies as it develops from day to day.” An open closet in the same room displays children’s military dolls, toy guns and dress-up uniforms.

Glendenning said the gallery on the rush to turn from a peacetime economy to a wartime one holds two of his favorite artifacts: a cutaway ship model from the Higgins boat-building plant in New Orleans, built as a reference to show workers how everything fit together, and the overalls and cap worn by a female munitions factory worker.

“It has such a ’40s sense of style,” he said. “I love the big red buttons at the hip.”

Toni Kiser, assistant director for collections management, said one of her favorite pieces is at the bottom right corner of the living room’s display cabinet: a statuette of Hitler bending over, with a pincushion as his rear end.

 
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U.S. pop star Ariana Grande, hardly a household name in Britain before a suicide bomber killed 22 people at her Manchester concert in May, has emerged as a national heroine there following an emotional televised benefit performance.

In the days following Grande’s sold-out show on Sunday, which raised some $3 million for a victims fund and became the U.K.’s most-watched TV broadcast of the year, Britons have embraced the 23-year-old singer. They have called for her to be formally honored by Queen Elizabeth and the city of Manchester.

At the One Love Manchester concert, Grande hugged a weeping schoolgirl as they performed her hit “My Everything” before a crowd of 55,000 people.

The tiny performer ended the show alone on stage, singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in tears.

Her team is working to release that emotional final number as a single to raise even more money for victims, the U.K.’s Independent newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The concert served as a catharsis for many in Manchester and all of Britain, moving British tabloid journalist Piers Morgan to write Grande a lengthy public apology for doubting her courage.

“By coming back to Manchester so soon, shrugging off the latest attack in London, standing on that stage and performing with such raw emotion and power, you showed more guts, resilience, strength of character and “Blitz spirit” than every sniveling, pathetic ISIS coward put together,” Morgan wrote in the Daily Mail.

Grande was herself a survivor of the May 22 bombing, still inside Manchester Arena when an explosion ripped through the lobby area following her encore. Morgan had criticized the apparently shaken singer for quickly returning home to Florida instead of staying to console victims.

But within days Grande and her team began organizing the benefit, which overcame considerable logistical and security obstacles to take place less than two weeks later. Days before the show, she turned up unannounced at a Manchester-area hospital to visit young girls wounded in the attack.

Grande carried on with Sunday’s show despite the attack in London the night before in which seven people were killed. She enlisted fellow entertainers such as Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Coldplay and Oasis frontman and Manchester native Liam Gallagher.

Daily Telegraph columnist Victoria Lambert similarly apologized for dismissing Grande, who first gained fame on the Nickelodeon teen comedy “Victorious,” as a lightweight pop star not fit to be a role model for her daughter.

“Because far from being a cliched child star, Grande has shown herself to be a perfect role model for our daughters after all,” Lambert wrote.
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The woman who accused comedian Bill Cosby of sexually assaulting her in 2004 told her story for the first time publicly Tuesday at the entertainer’s trial.

Andrea Constand, a former Temple University basketball official, told the suburban Philadelphia courtroom Tuesday that she visited the comic’s Philadelphia home for career advice. She told how Cosby allegedly gave her three blue pills, telling her they were to reduce stress.

“They’re your friends. They’ll take the edge off,” she said Cosby told her.

Constand said the pills instead left her paralyzed and unable to fend off Cosby’s sexual advances.

“In my head, I was trying to get my hands to move or my legs to move, but I was frozen. I wasn’t able to fight in any way. I wanted it to stop,” she said.

She alleged that Cosby put his hands under her shirt and on her genitals.

Cosby whispered to his lawyers and shook his head during her testimony.

His defense lawyers asked Constand why she continued to telephone Cosby after the alleged assault and attended one of his comedy shows.

Constand said it was just business concerning the university basketball team. But the defense emphasized inconsistencies between Constand’s testimony and in accounts she gave to police a decade ago, including how she first met the actor.

The cross-examination will continue Wednesday.

The court also heard from the mother of another one of Cosby’s alleged victims, who corroborated her daughter’s testimony of being assaulted by the comedian in 1996.

More than 50 women allege that Cosby sexually assaulted them in incidents dating back to the 1960s, when he emerged as a major comedy star. Most would have happened too long ago to prosecute.

Constand’s complaint is the only one that has come to trial. Cosby has denied all the charges and is not expected to take the stand.

Cosby is known for his stand-up comedy routines focusing on his Philadelphia childhood and growing up in a middle-class black family. He played a wise and genial doctor in his 1980s television comedy series The Cosby Show. It was the country’s most popular television series for several years, but is scarcely rebroadcast anymore.
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Amal Clooney on Tuesday gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, the first children for the international human rights lawyer and her movie star spouse.

“This morning Amal and George welcomed Ella and Alexander Clooney into their lives. Ella, Alexander and Amal are all healthy, happy and doing fine,” George Clooney’s publicist Stan Rosenfield said in an email.

He added cheekily, “George is sedated and should recover in a few days.”

Amal Clooney, 39, and the 56-year-old Oscar-winning star of films like “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Three Kings” married in Italy in 2014, making them one of the world’s biggest celebrity couples.

Rosenfield did not say where the twins were born but the couple appear to have been spending much of their time recently in England, where they have one of several homes.

The couple adopted a low profile during the pregnancy, keeping the news private for months before it was confirmed in February by the actor’s close friend, Matt Damon.

Amal Clooney largely continued her work as a human rights lawyer, addressing the United Nations in March and urging the international community to investigate crimes committed by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

Nevertheless, celebrity news media speculated for months about the sex of the twins, where they would be born and in which country they will be raised.

On Tuesday, social media lit up with congratulatory messages and “Ella and Alexander” was among the top trending topics on Twitter in the United States.

Many contributors praised the choice of names as a refreshingly normal departure from a trend that has seen celebrity babies given names like Apple, Audio, Bronx, North West and Rocket.

“Good lord, the Clooneys have given their twins lovely ordinary names. Shocking. And they call themselves celebrities…,” wrote British journalist Nicola Jane Swinney on Twitter.

Comedian Ellen DeGeneres posted a Twitter message saying, “Congratulations, George and Amal, or as I’m now calling you, Ocean’s Four.”

Congratulations also came from actress Mia Farrow and U.S. journalist Katie Couric.

People magazine reported on Tuesday that former U.S. President Barack Obama paid a long, private visit with the Clooneys at their home in the countryside west of London on May 27.

George Clooney canceled a visit to Armenia for a humanitarian event this past weekend, saying in a message to organizers that “if I came there and my wife had twins while I was there, I could never come home.”
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Lined up against shopkeepers hawking everything from fresh parsley to colorful socks, Marrakech’s historic booksellers face an uncertain future as authorities plan an urban makeover in one of Morocco’s tourist hubs.

In the shadow of the 12th century Al Koutoubia mosque — also known as the Mosque of Booksellers — the bustling shops once specialized in handwritten manuscripts and religious texts. It is a business that has been passed down from generation to generation.

Only 26 booksellers remain in Bab Doukkala on the edge of the old city. Their stocks include Arabic translations of Karl Marx and modern Moroccan cookbooks, as well as centuries-old manuscripts of Islamic law, some of which sell for thousands of dollars.

Now they face eviction by authorities who plan to move them for the sixth time in 40 years as part of a city planning project for Marrakech, a former imperial capital and home to some of Morocco’s finest mosques, palaces and gardens.

Many of the vendors believe they belong in Jamaa El Fna square inside the old historic medina. They had plied their trade in the popular tourist district for years before being kicked out to make way for food stalls decades ago.

“The authorities want to maintain an image of Marrakech that … attracts tourists, like snake charmers and belly dancers,” said Bassam Aqdad, who inherited his shop from his father.

“Jamaa El Fna has worldwide recognition as a UNESCO world heritage site. … We are just as much a part of the square as everything else that remains there.”

The uprooted booksellers were forced to settle in Bab Doukkala square on the outskirts of the old town about 10 years ago. The line of shops resembles a shantytown, with books packed among the dusty plastic sheeting and rusty metal frames.

Authorities are planning to tear down the Bab Doukkala souk and replace it with a public garden, according to locals.

“This is ‘hogra’,” said Fettah Belkharchi, 66, using a colloquial term to describe the abuse of power and injustices.

The word is commonly used in anti-government protests.

Interior ministry officials and local Marrakech authorities did not respond to calls seeking comment.

Trying to form a united front, Omar Zouita, who was among the traders uprooted from Jamaa El Fna, established the “Association of Awareness.” But after two more similar bodies were established, some believe attempts are being made to split their ranks.

“They don’t want anyone defending booksellers here,” Aqdad said.

Their trade has also suffered because of global trends. The popularity of the internet and digital versions of books have led to a steady decline in demand for printed materials.

The industry has also had to contend with the low literacy rate that has been prevalent in the country for decades. It is only recently that literacy levels have started to improve, reaching 67.1 percent, according to UNICEF.

“At the end of the day, all we have are our books,” said 36-year-old Mohammed Khayi. “When things get rough, we can pick up a book and forget everything else.”
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Sony Pictures is firing back at Dan Aykroyd after the actor criticized the director of last year’s Ghostbusters remake for spending too much money on the film.

Aykroyd said on the British chat show Sunday Brunch that director Paul Feig spent an extra $30 million to $40 million on reshoots for the film, making it “economically not feasible” for a sequel.

Sony Pictures spokeswoman Jean Guerin said the company had “a strong relationship” with Feig and “incredible respect for his work.” She said the cost of reshoots was $3 million to $4 million. Sony Pictures hasn’t said whether there will be a sequel. The company does say Ghostbusters television and family projects are in the works.

Aykroyd co-wrote and starred in the original Ghostbusters film and its 1989 sequel.
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Bob Dylan has completed his Nobel course requirements.

The Swedish Academy announced Monday that it has received the mandatory lecture from the 2016 literature winner, enabling Dylan to collect 8 million Swedish kronor ($922,000) in prize money.

Spokeswoman Sara Danius described Dylan’s talk in a news release as “extraordinary” and “eloquent.” Nobel Prize officials said the 26-minute talk was recorded on Sunday in Los Angeles and an audio clip is posted on the academy’s website.

Danius said its delivery to the academy meant that “the Dylan adventure is coming to a close.” Dylan, widely regarded as the most influential songwriter of his time, received the Nobel Literature diploma and medal in April but was still required to give a speech to receive the money.

Dylan took weeks to publicly acknowledge even winning the prize, announced in October, and greeted with both joy and dismay that a rock star had received an honor previously given to William Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Alice Munro among others.

He did not attend December’s Nobel ceremony in Stockholm and his acceptance remarks were read by the United States Ambassador to Sweden, Azita Raji.

Dylan’s songs have drawn on literary influences from Beat poetry to Anton Chekhov and his recording was a celebration of books and music and of the common language among art forms. In a warm, raspy delivery, with lounge-style piano in the background, he called Buddy Holly his first musical hero, praised his “imaginative verses” and remembered seeing him in concert not long before Holly died in a 1959 plane crash.

“Something about him seemed permanent and he filled me with conviction,” Dylan said of seeing Holly on stage.  “Then out of the blue, the most uncanny thing happened, he looked at me right straight there in the eye and he transmitted something, something I didn’t know what. It gave me the chills.”

Dylan said that folk songs were his earliest musical vocabulary, but that books such as “Ivanhoe” and “Don Quixote” helped shape his view of the world and inspire him to write songs “unlike anything anybody had ever heard.” From the start, he believed in absorbing classical texts and the vernacular of the day.

He discussed three works at length: “Moby Dick,” (a reminder we “see only the surface of things”), “All Quiet On the Western Front” (in which “death is everywhere, nothing else is possible”) and “The Odyssey,” a “strange, adventurous tale” he likened to such modern pop songs as Simon & Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound.” He concluded by noting that Shakespeare’s words were meant to be spoken, “Just as lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on a page.”

“And I hope some of you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended to be heard: in concert or on record or however people are listening to songs these days,” he said. “I return once again to Homer, who says, `Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story.'”
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Wonder Woman was even mightier than expected. Warner Bros. has revised the film’s weekend estimate up to $103.1 million.

The studio on Monday said the tickets sold on Sunday turned out to be even higher than it estimated over the weekend. Warner Bros. previously had announced a $100.5 million North American haul.

The nearly $3 million swing, Warner Bros. said, was due to an unusually small drop in audience from Saturday to Sunday. That indicates that the well-reviewed film’s strong word of mouth is giving Wonder Woman more momentum than usual.

The Patty Jenkins-directed film became the biggest opening for a film directed by a woman and, by the far, the most successful female-led superhero release.
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In the three weeks since St. Nicholas came to Moscow, more than 300,000 people have stood in huge lines for up to 10 hours to visit a gilded ark thought to carry his bone fragments. Yet the queues stretching down the Moscow River embankment from Christ the Savior Cathedral are something of their own marvel.

 The massive turnout to see the saint’s relics, which are on loan from their home in Bari, Italy for the first time, underline how strongly the Orthodox Church has become a part of Russians’ sense of themselves a quarter-century after the collapse of the officially atheist Soviet Union.

 

“It was tough, but you got a chance to think about your life, all the problems and the sins you have committed,” economist Svetlana Dzhuma, 24, said after exiting the cathedral in a state of elation.

 

President Vladimir Putin, who says he was secretly baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church as an infant, paid his respects to the relics on the day they arrived in Moscow, where photos of him kissing the ark were widely featured in Russian media.

 

Although Russians remain predominantly secular and have opposed church-backed initiatives such as a ban on abortions or public school classes on Orthodox Church teachings, the overwhelming majority of them strongly identify as Russian Orthodox.

Christian revival

Nicholas, who died in 343, never set foot in the territory that became Russia. But he has become the Russian Orthodox Church’s most popular saint, credited with miracles and with preventing catastrophes in Russia. His prominence in the church has made the relics something of a must-see even for people who are not regular church-goers.

 

Russia has witnessed a Christian revival since the crumbling Soviet state began to loosen its grip on religious life in the late 1980s. The percentage of Russians calling themselves Christian Orthodox shot up from 17 percent to around 77 percent, Lev Gudkov, director of the independent Levada Center polling and research organization, said.

Stable 7 percent

 

However, roughly 40 percent of those who identify as Orthodox Christians say they do not believe in God or eternal life, and the number of churchgoers who take communion is stable at around 7 percent.

Gudkov described the thinking as “a very superficial change in identity: I’m a Russian, therefore Orthodox. It’s a change from the Soviet identity to an ethnic Russian and religious one.”

 

Putin in his third term as president has evoked Russia’s Christian roots and relied on the church to provide the ideological backing for his policies at home and abroad. Among his justifications for Russia annexing Crimea from Ukraine was that the ancient settlement of Chersonesus there is as important to Russians as Jerusalem’s Temple Mount is to Jews, Muslims and Christians.

 

The Orthodox Church got permission to host the St. Nicholas relics after Patriarch Kirill met with Pope Francis last year in the first such meeting between the leaders of the two religions since the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches split about a millennium ago. The ark will be on display, first in Moscow and later in St. Petersburg, until the end of July.

Resurgence of faith

Speaking after a prayer celebrating the relics’ arrival, Kirill referred to the crowds of believers waiting to see the relics as a sign of the resurgence of faith.

“If someone has the energy to stand seven, eight hours or longer on the street, in the heat, in the cold, under the rain, it speaks of a very strong faith,” he said.

Yulia Kamolova, a 34-year-old accountant, got up at 5 a.m. and stood in line for nine hours to see the relics “to cleanse myself” and to show them to her 12-year-old son. Retired pharmacist Svetlana Timonina said Nicholas, known in Russia as “the wonderworker,” was her favorite saint and that he had answered her prayers in the past.

Many in the line spoke of the miracles for which they prayed. Andrei Olenko, 52, said he traveled from Crimea hoping for a turnaround for the former farming collective where he works.

“Our farm is falling apart, and we would like (St. Nicholas) to help the farm,” Olenko said.

Blind faith

The Levada Center’s Gudkov said “this craving for a miracle, craving for a cure,” is becoming noticeable as the country’s disillusioned people have started pinning their hopes for a better future to a blind faith in the supernatural instead of on the ideal of a democratic government.

“People were waiting for a miracle, that once they gave up the Soviet ideology and Soviet state they will get prosperous — and then it didn’t happen,” he said.

Xenia Loutchenko, a Moscow-based commentator on church affairs, said it would be an oversimplification to dismiss those lined up to visit the relics as ignorant or superstitious, as many of Moscow’s atheists have.

What fuels this craving for a miracle is that with standards of living falling, Russians have little faith in a positive change from social institutions or the government.

“The thing is, people don’t have much to hope for with the current state of our health care, what people hear from doctors and bureaucrats: They have nothing else to rely on, other than to go and pray.”

 
…

Bill Cosby went on trial Monday on charges he drugged and sexually assaulted a woman more than a decade ago, with prosecutors immediately introducing evidence the 79-year-old TV star once known as America’s Dad had done it before to someone else.

 

The prosecution’s opening witness was not the person Cosby is charged with violating, but another woman, who broke down in tears as she testified that the comedian abused her in the mid-1990s at a hotel bungalow in Los Angeles.

 

Cosby is on trial on charges he assaulted Andrea Constand, a former employee of Temple University’s basketball program, at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004. His good-guy reputation already in ruins, he could get 10 years in prison if convicted.

In her opening statement, prosecutor Kristen Feden noted that the “Cosby Show” star previously admitted under oath that he gave Constand pills and touched her genitals as she lay on his couch.

 

“She couldn’t say no,” Feden said. “She can’t move, she can’t talk. Completely paralyzed. Frozen. Lifeless.”

 

Cosby attorney Brian McMonagle countered by attacking what he said were inconsistencies in Constand’s story. McMonagle also disputed that Constand was incapacitated and made the case that she and Cosby had a romantic relationship. McMonagle said Cosby gave her the cold and allergy medicine Benadryl only after she complained she couldn’t sleep.

 

The defense lawyer said Constand changed the date of the encounter from mid-March to mid-January of 2004. And he said Constand initially told police that she and Cosby had never spoken afterward, when, in fact, phone records show the two talked 72 times after mid-January — with 53 of those calls initiated by Constand.

 

Constand, 44, of the Toronto area, is expected to take the stand this week and tell her story in public for the first time.

 

The trial’s first witness was Kelly Johnson of Atlanta, who worked for one of Cosby’s agents at the William Morris Agency. She described an encounter she said took place in 1996 at the Hotel Bel-Air when she was in her mid-30s.

 

Prosecutors are trying to show Cosby’s treatment of Constand fit a pattern of predatory behavior.

 

They had wanted to call as many as 13 women who say Cosby sexually assaulted them — out of more than 60 accusers in all. But Montgomery County Judge Steven O’Neill, in a victory for Cosby, said jurors could hear only from Constand and Johnson.

 

Johnson testified that Cosby pressured her to take a large white pill that knocked her out, and when she woke up he put lotion on her hand and forced her to touch his genitals.

 

“My dress was pulled up from the bottom, and it was pulled down from the top, and my breasts were out,” she said, crying. “And I felt naked.”

 

Cosby’s lawyer argued that Johnson was seeking a payout from the TV star. He also said Johnson had a six-year relationship with Cosby despite a company ban on dating clients.

 

Cosby arrived at the courthouse in the morning carrying a wooden cane and holding his spokesman’s arm for support as he walked past dozens of cameras.

 

Cosby’s wife, Camille, was not in court. But actress Keshia Knight Pulliam, who played his daughter Rudy on the top-rated “Cosby Show” in the 1980s and ’90s, was at his side as he made his way into the building. She told reporters she was there to support her TV dad.

 

“I want to be the person that I would like to have if the tables were turned,” she said. “Right now it’s the jury’s job and the jury’s decision to determine guilt or innocence. It’s not mine or anyone else’s.”

 

Cosby built a wholesome reputation as a father and family man, on screen and off, during his extraordinary 50-year career in entertainment. He created TV characters, most notably Dr. Cliff Huxtable, with crossover appeal among blacks and whites alike. His TV shows, movies and comedy tours earned him an estimated $400 million.

 

Then a deposition unsealed in 2015 in a lawsuit brought by Constand revealed that Cosby had a long history of extramarital liaisons with young women and that he obtained quaaludes in the 1970s to give to women before sex. Dozens of women soon came forward to say he had drugged and assaulted them.

 

The statute of limitations for prosecuting Cosby had run out in nearly every case. This is the only one to result in criminal charges against the comic.

 

Feden, the prosecutor, warned the jury not to fall into the trap of confusing celebrities with the characters they play.

 

“We think we really know them,” she said. “In reality, we only have a glimpse of who they really are.”

 

Gloria Allred, the celebrity attorney who represents several of Cosby’s accusers and showed up for the first day of the trial, told reporters she is hopeful “there will be justice in this case.”

 

“This case is not going to be decided on optics,” she said. “It’s going to be decided on the evidence, and finally, it’s Mr. Cosby who’s going to have to face that evidence and confront the accusers who are against him.”

Constand filed a police complaint in 2005 over the encounter at Cosby’s home. The district attorney at the time said the case was too weak to prosecute. But a new set of prosecutors charged Cosby a year and a half ago after the deposition became public and numerous women came forward.

 

Cosby’s lawyers tried repeatedly to get the case thrown out. They said Cosby testified in the lawsuit only after being promised he could never be charged.

 

And they argued that the delayed prosecution makes the case impossible to defend, given that witnesses have died, memories have faded and Cosby, they say, is blind.

 

The AP does not typically identify people who say they are sexual assault victims unless they grant permission, which Constand and Johnson have done.

 
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