Free Republic

The strange saga of the Taco Bell art heist. It all began in 2015 in Westlake, Ohio, when a burglar ran off with one of his pieces and disappeared, stumping local police Though Taco Bell purchased the originals for their corporate offices in 2003, he explained, the prints have scattered like seeds in the underground art market, where they’re now listed for sale for as much as $10,000 apiece. Unsurprisingly, it seems like employees are in on it.

Explanation: What's happened to the sky? Moonlight illuminates a snowy scene in this night land and skyscape made on 2013 January from Lower Miller Creek, Alaska, USA. Overexposed near the mountainous western horizon is the first quarter Moon itself, surrounded by an icy halo and flanked left and right by moondogs. Sometimes called mock moons, a more scientific name for the luminous apparitions is paraselenae (plural). Analogous to a sundog or parhelion, a paraselene is produced by moonlight refracted through thin, hexagonal, plate-shaped ice crystals. As determined by the crystal geometry, paraselenae are seen at an angle of 22 degrees...

Paul Wendkos, who directed the 1959 surfing classic "Gidget" and two sequels, died early Thursday at his home in Malibu... His feature film credits include 1961's "Angel Baby," with George Hamilton and Mercedes McCambridge, and 1971's "The Mephisto Waltz," starring Alan Alda and Jacqueline Bisset...

Like actress Sally Field, I am a mom. Unlike Sally Field, I do not live in La-La Land. We breathe a different brand of oxygen. We hold diametrically opposed worldviews. We have nothing in common but stretch marks. Contrary to tongue-tied Sally's incoherent Primetime Emmy Awards diatribe, childbearing and childrearing experiences do not bond all women in a universal sorority of nonconfrontation. There are sheep moms. There are lion moms. We know which kind Sally Field is. "If mothers ruled the, ruled the world, there would be no [expletive] wars in the first place," Miss Field bleated. In the Gidget...

Out of Malibu, Calif., came one of the most influential literary works of modern times. And this spring,48 years after it was published, the whole town is reading it. I refer to the novella "Gidget," which Malibu recently picked for its "One City One Book" program. Laugh if you must, then ask yourself the following questions: Did "The Great Gatsby" change the world? How many people decided to move or quit their jobs after reading "Moby-Dick"? "Gidget," on the other hand, altered the course of American history, drawing legions to California beaches, spawning a lineage of movie and TV spinoffs...