Fast Times

For much of her life—like many Westerners—most of what Pamela Olson knew of the Middle East was informed by headlines and stereotypes. But when she traveled to Palestine in 2003, she found herself thrown with dizzying speed into the realities of Palestinian life.

Amy Heckerling's film "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" had a couple of things in its favor–a funny script from a very young Cameron Crowe, great performances from Sean Penn and a bevy of previously undiscovered young stars some of whom went on to bigger and better things.
The film also had a terrific soundtrack. It's virtually half of an Eagles album even though they don't perform together. Don Henley contributes the terrific "Love Rules", melodic Tim Schmitt track "So Mich In Love", a Joe Walsh radio ready rocker and Don Felder's "Never Surrender" (that, of course, happened because the manager of the band Irving Azoff acted as a producer on the film). Poco turns in a fine track and Jackson Browne's superb "Somebody's Baby" which didn't show up on one of his albums (a best of) until 15 years later. Other popular performers including Donna Summer, Sammy Hagar, Stevie Nicks, Oingo Boingo and Graham Nash all contribute fine tracks as well filling out the album.

An early story in Hollywood Hellraisers has Marlon Brando being taken to kindergarten on a leash. Needless to say, most of this book covers the period after which Brando's leash has come off. Robert Sellers, author of a previous book on the bad boys of British moviemaking, gives gossipy, second-hand accounts of the more sordid aspects of the lives of Brando, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, and Warren Beatty, shuttling through stories of sexual conquest, rampant drug and alcohol abuse, and general bad behavior.

Floyd 'Money' Mayweather is one of the most successful professional boxers of all time. In September 2015 he defeated Andre Berto at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas to claim his forty-ninth professional victory in a glittering unbeaten ring career that has spanned two decades. Mayweather was born into a boxing family that was barely surviving on the poverty line.