Arts & Life

This is the network TV definition of too little, too late.

On Wednesday, CBS announced the names of three new actors who will be joining the cast of its long-running cop drama Hawaii Five-0. To no one's surprise, all three actors are nonwhite: Ian Anthony Dale is half Japanese, Meaghan Rath is half South Asian and Beulah Koale is of Samoan descent.

More than 20 years ago, children's author and illustrator Maurice Sendak and his friend Arthur Yorinks collaborated on a book. But they were both busy with other projects at the time, and they never bothered to get it published. Sendak died in 2012, but that decades-old collaboration, Presto and Zesto in Limboland, has been rediscovered.

It's hard to believe, but before the 1950s, guitars were rarely heard in British music. Billy Bragg says the first guitars to hit the British pop scene came as a part of skiffle, a musical movement inspired by African-American roots musicians.

There's no bigger name in comedy today than Dave Chappelle. At only 14 years old he started performing stand up in Washington, D.C., and since then, he's starred in cult classic Hollywood films, created one of the most beloved sketch comedy shows of all time, Chappelle's Show, and released some of the most widely watched comedy specials ever. He was also behind one of the biggest moments in underground hip-hop this century, a day-long concert documented in the film Dave Chappelle's Block Party.

Every year, I find myself looking out for new books that use genre fiction's tools to dissect the unique strangeness of women's lives. Some emerge from the science fiction and fantasy scene; others from the literary world. Enter Samantha Hunt's newest book, The Dark Dark, part of the same FSG Originals imprint that continues to bring us Jeff Vandermeer's crossover novels.

Londoners may feel hot this summer, but historian Rosemary Ashton says it's nothing compared to what the city endured in 1858. That was the year of "The Great Stink" — when the Thames River, hot and filled with sewage, made life miserable for the residents of the city.

"It was continuously hot for two to three months with temperatures up into the 90s quite often," Ashton says. "The hottest recorded day up to that point in history was the 16th of June, 1858, when the temperature reached 94.5 degrees Fahrenheit, in the shade."

In August 2016, three months before the presidential election, Republican nominee Donald Trump was behind in the polls. Instead of staying on message, the candidate was engaged in a politically damaging fight with the parents of an Army captain killed in Iraq.

On the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's death, the Bank of England has unveiled a new banknote featuring the beloved author.

The new notes, made of polymer, will be entering circulation in September.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has some 34,000 works in its collection — but you'll only find a fraction of those up on the wall.

"A little under 2,000 of them are on view at any one time in the galleries," says Keir Winesmith, head of SFMOMA's Web and digital platforms.

So what to do with the rest?

Don't let Tamara Shopsin's Thurberesque cover drawing of a helmeted girl in cleats kicking right through a football mislead you. Arbitrary Stupid Goal is not about football. It isn't about any sport — except, perhaps, smashing grand life goals to smithereens.

"Earlier that evening, she had found an old revolver in her father's room. But she had left it where it lay, for what good would it do to carry it? If it came to guns, her enemies used them better."

Ebony magazine has been the magazine of black America since it was first published in November 1945. Its stories of success and achievement were a welcome antidote to how its readers normally saw themselves portrayed in mainstream newspapers and magazines. (If they were featured at all, it was usually for something that reinforced the mainstream stereotype of who and what black Americans were.) Until a decade ago, Ebony regularly sold out on newsstands and had a large and loyal subscriber base.

It's that time of year when you hear talk of "summer reading," a term that refers to books that are fun and undemanding — you know, the perfect accompaniment to lying on the beach. Such books heighten the airy sense of irresponsibility that comes with escaping the gravity of our lives back home.

We'll be recapping Season 7 of HBO's Game of Thrones here on Monkey See. We'll try to turn them around overnight, so look for them first thing on Mondays. And of course: Spoilers abound

Academy Award-winning actor Martin Landau, known for his leading roles in North By Northwest and the 1960s Mission: Impossible TV series, has died. He was 89.

He died on Saturday of "unexpected complications" at the UCLA Medical Center, his publicist confirmed.

In his seven-decade acting career, Landau worked with a cast of Hollywood director greats, including Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen and Tim Burton.

On Nov. 12, 2012, an abandoned house on the Eastern Shore of Virginia burned to the ground. For the next five months, night after night, volunteer fire fighters responded to conflagrations all over the county. Locals started spreading the word: There was an arsonist in Accomack County.

That arsonist turned out to be Charlie Smith, a local and former volunteer firefighter. By the time he was caught, some 86 fires had been set, mostly in abandoned buildings. Smiths' accomplice in the arsons was his girlfriend, Tonya Bundick.

In the hit sitcom Parks and Recreation, Aubrey Plaza played an intern who hated everybody and everything. In the new movie, The Little Hours, she plays a medieval nun who hates everybody and everything, so its nice to see her branching out.

We've invited Plaza to answer three questions about the famous Plaza Hotel in New York.

Click the audio link above to see how she does.

Actress Jodie Whittaker will portray the Doctor in the next season of the beloved BBC series Doctor Who, becoming the first woman to play the role. The BBC announced the move after Sunday's Wimbledon men's final.

"It's more than an honor to play the Doctor," Whittaker said in a news release. "It means remembering everyone I used to be, while stepping forward to embrace everything the Doctor stands for: hope. I can't wait."