from Bruce
Anecdotes
Sports
• Bill Cosby was an athlete before he became a stand-up comedian and movie and TV star. He once became the high-jump champion of the Middle Atlantic Conference by psyching out his opponents. He had not been jumping well, managing to clear only about six feet. However, at the meet a bump was on the approach to the high jump, and a few athletes had complained about it. Soon, Bill’s voice was heard coming loudly from a tent: “There’s really a terrible bump out there. There’s no way anybody is going to jump over five-ten today.” Mr. Cosby won the championship with a jump of only six feet, which was actually a short height in that event.
• Comedian Bernie Mac admires baseball player Pete Rose, aka Charlie Hustle. He tried to imitate Mr. Rose — once. Playing softball, he tried to steal second base. Trying to beat the throw to second, he slid headfirst — and tore off a bunch of skin on his chest. Normally, Mr. Mac’s skin is black, but for a while after that slide, his chest was pink. Mr. Mac says about Charlie Hustle, “Now tell me he don’t belong in the Hall of Fame.”
• Dick Van Dyke was tall at a very young age — 6-foot-1 at age 11. Because of his height, he tried out for the basketball team. However, he lacked coordination and warmed the bench all season. He had a chance to play in only one game — but unfortunately, when he jumped up to go on the court, his pants caught a splinter in the bench and the seat ripped out.
Television
• The world’s strangest comedian could very well be Andy Kaufman. One of his alter egos was Tony Clifton, an obnoxious jerk. While co-starring on Taxi, Mr. Kaufman wanted Tony Clifton to appear, but he insisted that he and Tony have separate contracts, separate dressing rooms, and separate parking spaces (although Mr. Kaufman, of course, was Tony Clifton). The good people at Taxi liked Mr. Kaufman, so they granted his wishes, but they soon discovered that Tony Clifton was not the right character to have on the show, so they decided not to use him. Mr. Kaufman, in the character of Tony Clifton, was outraged, and he yelled, “If you’re going to fire me, you better bring security guards, and I want to be fired on stage.” The good people at Taxi liked Mr. Kaufman, so they granted his wishes, and they fired Tony Clifton on stage. Mr. Kaufman, in the character of Tony Clifton, put on a great act, yelling at the Taxi head honchos, “You’ll never work in this town again.” Of course, security guards escorted Tony Clifton out of the building (just as Mr. Kaufman, in the character of Tony Clifton, had wanted), and soon afterward, Mr. Kaufman, in the character of Mr. Kaufman, walked in the building, acted like nothing had happened, and did not mention Tony Clifton.
• Back when Johnny Carson was king of late-night television as host of The Tonight Show, Drew Carey — and every other standup comedian — dreamed of getting on the show. They also dreamed of being called over by Mr. Carson to sit on the couch — something he did only when he really, really liked a comedian’s act. Unfortunately, Mr. Carey missed his first chance to be on The Tonight Show. While he was out of town, he did not check his messages, and when he returned to LA, he heard the message inviting him to be on The Tonight Show. He called The Tonight Show immediately, of course, but unfortunately they had already found another comic. The booker told Mr. Carey, “We’ll get back to you.” Mr. Carey took the mishap well, figuring that when The Tonight Show called again, he would have more experience and be funnier. Sure enough, The Tonight Show did call him again — two years later. Mr. Carey was very, very funny, and Mr. Carson invited him to sit on the couch. This TV appearance started many good things for Mr. Carey, who said, “I would take a bullet for Johnny Carson.”
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Michael Egan
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BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "A Dance in the Sun, Pt. 1"
Album: HERE GOES
Artist: Anderida
Artist Location: Canterbury, UK
Info:
“A Dance in the Sun, Pt. 1” is strictly instrumental: no words.
“Anderida is the other side of The Deadest Hour: improvised instrumentation with a funky, bluesy, psychedelic edge.”
“The music of Anderida is integrated with the poetry and voice of Malanghi.”
Marcus Weekes: lead guitar
Nick Litherland: bass
Gram Swan: rhythm guitar
Jake Weekes: drums and additional instruments, and field recordings.
“An improvised instrumental experience, encompassing styles through rock, blues, funk with an ever present psychedelic edge. No two performances are the same, and every gig is improvised. Nick, Gram and Jake provide an ever evolving canvas over which Marcus weaves his colourful, astounding and unique playing style. In the studio the band perform live and keep overdubs to the minimum.”
Price: Name Your Price (Includes FREE) for track; £5 for six-track album
Genre: Improvisation. Experimental.
Links:
HERE GOES
Anderida on Bandcamp
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Diversity Report
Hollywood
Hollywood movies are more ethnically diverse than ever according to a new report from UCLA, which found that women and people of color “have made enormous gains” over the past decade in their share of leading roles in top-performing films.
UCLA’s “Hollywood Diversity Report 2022,” released Thursday, found that the percentage of leading roles played by people of color in last year’s top 200 films has nearly quadrupled since 2011; that their share of writing credits has more than quadrupled; and that their percentage of directing jobs has nearly tripled.
It also found that the percentage of women in leading roles has nearly doubled over the last decade; that their share of writing credits has more than doubled; and that the percentage of women directors has increased by more than fivefold over the past decade.
The report, co-authored by UCLA sociologists Dr. Darnell Hunt and Dr. Ana-Christina Ramón, is the latest indication that inclusion efforts by Hollywood’s unions and employers – with pressure from the Motion Picture Academy and the press – are working, though it notes that more work still needs to be done for women and minorities to achieve parity in front of and behind the camera.
See the full report here.
Hollywood
Rule Bans Jazz In Schools
New Orleans
The school board in the city where jazz took root is preparing to undo a little-known 1922 rule that bans jazz music and dancing in public schools.
Officials tell The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate that the policy has racist origins, as its creators sought at the time to distance New Orleans schoolchildren from the African Americans who created the genre. The rule has been ignored for decades. Jazz is taught in some schools and marching bands accompanied by dance teams are a fixture of Carnival season parades.
“In this instance and in this instance only we’re glad that the policy was ignored by our students, by our schools,” board member Katherine Baudouin said. “Our schools played a major role in the development of jazz.”
The policy came to the board’s attention after Ken Ducote, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Collaborative of Charter Schools, read a book, “Chord Changes on the Chalkboard: How Public School Teachers Shaped Jazz and the Music of New Orleans,” by Al Kennedy. Kennedy had found out about the policy while doing research.
“Think of it as an early version of the book ban,” he said. “It seems like they were more afraid of it being a bad influence than anything else.”
New Orleans
Smear Backfires
‘Antiracist Baby’
Rafael "Ted" Cruz’s attempt to smear the book Antiracist Baby by Ibram X. Kendi seems to have backfired.
Following an attack by the Texas Senator during Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing, Antiracist Baby has risen to the top of Amazon’s best-sellers charts. As of writing, the book is Number One on Amazon’s best-selling Children’s Books in the U.S. chart, and is currently the Number Two best-selling book overall. It’s also at Number One in Children’s Values Books and Children’s Books on Prejudice & Racism categories.
Cruz invoked Antiracist Baby in an attempt to argue that Georgetown Day School in Washington D.C., which sees Jackson as a board member, is brainwashing children with critical race theory (an academic discipline taught in law school). “Do you agree … that babies are racist?” the senator asked Jackson.
While holding up a copy of the book, Cruz bemoaned the book’s message that people learn to be racist, and are not born racist.
‘Antiracist Baby’
Releasing NFT Collection
Bill Murray
Bill Murray is one of the few famous people who pretty much everyone likes. Whether he’s acting, appearing on talk shows, singing to an entire baseball stadium, or just living his life in a way that regularly sees him featured in ridiculous stories, Murray has ended up with a public image that makes him immensely endearing to large swathes of the world.
Now, however, in an apparent attempt to test just how far decades upon decades of goodwill can last him, Murray has announced his latest venture: An NFT collection created in collaboration with the meme and boobs aficionados over at The Chive.
The Hollywood Reporter describes the Official Bill Murray 1000 NFT collection as a series of “blockchain collectibles that will tell verified Murray tales.” Each of the NFTs apparently comes with “a unique graphic of Murray and accompanying text of a brief anecdote about the actor that he has either personally revealed to [The Chive] or has verified from previously published material.” In short, the time-honored tradition of people freely sharing stories about their run-ins with Bill Murray has finally, at long last, been properly monetized.
NFTs, as we know, are for speculators, not birds, which makes them the perfect “storytelling vehicle” for subjects that The Hollywood Reporter says range “from professional topics (such as discussing a role [Murray] turned down), to philosophical Murray-isms, to his uncommon pastimes and quirks.” An example of this provided in Resig’s post is the story of how Murray decided to start calling his old Blackberry Classic “Bill Urry.” The bulk of the tale is this: “The ‘M’ key doesn’t work.’”
Bill Murray
‘Destroy His Life’
Frivolous Lawsuit
It’s pretty clear at this point that Donald Trump Individual #1 is never going to move past losing the 2020 election. He’ll be complaining about it for the rest of his life, just as he’ll never stop complaining about the Russia investigation — which he’s now suing Hillary Clinton, James Comey, and a host of others over, claiming they conspired to falsely accuse him of collusion ahead of the 2016 election.
The 108-page lawsuit, filed Thursday in a Florida federal court, accuses the defendants — including Clinton, Comey, Christopher Steele, Peter Strokz, the Democratic National Committee, and pretty much everyone else who appeared on Trump’s Twitter feed over the course of the investigation — of perpetrating a racketeering conspiracy to besmirch the former president.
“In the run-up to the 2016 Presidential Election, Hillary Clinton and her cohorts orchestrated an unthinkable plot — one that shocks the conscience and is an affront to this nation’s democracy,” the suit reads. “Acting in concert, the Defendants maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump a draft dodging conman, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty.”
Alina Habba, a New Jersey-based attorney who is reportedly despised by the rest of Trump the unindicted conspirator’s legal team, is representing Trump the failed game show host in the case. The allegations are wide-ranging, but the complaint centers around the idea that the defendants concocted an elaborate scheme to take down Trump the bullshit artist, in part by spying on Trump the known liar’s campaign and hacking into the servers of Trump Bedbug Tower and the White House. The complain reads like a 108-page Twitter thread of various conspiracy theories and factually baseless grievances stemming from the Russia investigation.
Trump The grifter is seeking $72 million in damages in the lawsuit filed on Thursday.
Frivolous Lawsuit
Thousands Of Quakes
Azores
Authorities on a mid-Atlantic Portuguese island hit by thousands of small earthquakes in recent days started evacuating people living at the bottom of coastal cliffs on Thursday as fears of a stronger tremor or a volcanic eruption grow.
Since Saturday, over 2,000 earthquakes, with a magnitude of between 1.6 and 3.3, have been recorded on the volcanic island of Sao Jorge in the Azores archipelago, according to the region's CIVISA seismo-volcanic surveillance centre.
The small quakes, which have caused no damage so far, were reported along the island's volcanic fissure of Manadas, which last erupted in 1808. A big earthquake hit the island in 1980, causing severe damage.
Sao Jorge, one of nine islands that make up the Azores, is home to about 8,400 people and is part of the archipelago's central group, which includes the popular tourist destinations of Faial and Pico, which are also volcanic.
Azores
Air Pollution Holds Clues
Alaska
In the pristine expanse of Alaska’s interior lies a dirty secret: some of the most polluted winter air in the United States can be found in and around Fairbanks.
The Fairbanks North Star Borough, which includes Alaska’s second largest city, routinely exceeds limits set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for particle pollution that can be inhaled and cause myriad health problems.
Over seven weeks this winter, nearly 50 scientists from the U.S. and Europe descended on Fairbanks to study the sources of air pollution, how the contaminants interact in the city’s cold and dark climate and to come up with a list of best practices for people living across the circumpolar north.
The task becomes even more important as climate change is driving people away from places that are getting hotter toward northern areas, even though climate change is warming the Arctic twice as fast as the rest of the planet. In Fairbanks, the average winter temperature rose 2.7 degrees F (1.5 degrees C) since 1992, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Like Salt Lake City and other cities surrounded by mountains, Fairbanks suffers from winter inversions, layers of warmer air that trap cold, dirty air and keep it from dissipating. Even though wind is blowing aloft, the cold air prevents the wind from getting down to ground level.
Alaska
Enables Communication
Brain Implant
A pair of brain microchips could one day allow those in 'pseudocomas' to communicate whatever they want, a new breakthrough suggests.
In a first, a 34-year-old patient who lacked even the most subtle of muscle twitches has used the technology to share a few precious words with his family, using little more than an intent to move his eyes.
Similar devices have previously given patients with the fast-progressing condition amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) the means to send simple messages with extremely limited movements, but researchers say the severity of the man's condition here represents a significant advancement for the technology.
A pseudocoma is also known as 'locked-in' syndrome, because while these patients cannot walk or talk, they are still very much conscious, capable of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, thinking, and feeling.
The man in this case was one such patient. Within months of diagnosis with the condition, he had already lost the ability to walk and talk. A year later, the patient was placed on a ventilator to help him breathe. A year after that, he lost the ability to fix his gaze.
Brain Implant
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