from Bruce
Anecdotes
Firsts
• Great Britain’s Madge Syers struck a blow for women’s liberation when she applied to skate in the world figure skating championship of 1902. Because the rules did not state that a woman couldn’t enter the competition, in which only men customarily competed, the judges allowed her to skate. She finished second to Sweden’s Ulrich Salchow, and defeated the male skaters from Germany and Great Britain. Because of Ms. Syers, the first women’s figure skating championship was held in 1906.
• In 1912, Fanny Sperry Steele entered the Calgary Stampede bucking horse contest. Competing against men, she won first place — and she was the first woman to become the event’s bucking horse champion. Wanting to show that her win wasn’t a fluke, she entered the bucking horse contest again in 1913 — and again she won first place.
Food
• While playing basketball at Auburn University, Charles Barkley weighed 300 pounds. Although he played basketball extremely well, Auburn fans and the fans of opposing teams thought that Mr. Barkley was fat, and they gave him such nicknames as the Round Mound of Rebound, Bread Truck, and Boy Gorge. Once, someone even sent a meal for Mr. Barkley to the Auburn bench during a game. His coach attempted to get Mr. Barkley to lose weight by having him run a mile with a pail of water in each hand and by having him run with heavy cinder blocks tied to his back, but he kept gaining weight. Eventually, after becoming a professional basketball player for the Philadelphia 76ers, Mr. Barkley decided to lose weight. He lost 10 pounds of fat through such dieting techniques as eating one pizza for supper instead of three.
• The best gymnasts in the world are supposed to stay on healthy diets. At the ranch of world-class women’s gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi, elite gymnasts eat chicken, rice, salad, and fruit, with no-fat salad dressing and no-fat milk. Once, Kerri Strug and Kim Zmeskal had to leave the ranch to get medical care, and instead of eating something like low-fat yoghurt for lunch, they ordered a deep-dish pizza and pigged out. As they were stuffing their faces, a local sportswriter they knew told them hello. They figured that the sportswriter would tell Mr. Karolyi that they were breaking training by eating pizza, but they found out later that the sportswriter had not. When Ms. Strug thanked the sportswriter for not telling on them, he replied, “Don’t worry about it. Sportswriters train on pizza, too.”
• Dominique Moceanu was trained almost from infancy to be a world-class gymnast. The first time that she attended an out-of-state meet, the other gymnasts she trained with were surprised that she didn’t know what salad dressing, bacon bits, and other high-fat food items were. Don’t feel sorry for Dominique — her mother fed her such foods as homemade bread. Still, young Dominique sometimes went to other kids’ houses to eat things that were not available in her own house. Once, she went to Becky Wildgen’s house, whose mother had just made cupcakes. Becky says that Dominique “had like twelve of them.”
• Ice skating coach Frank Carroll once explained to a mischievous young skater named Christopher Bowman — at the request of the young boy’s mother, who felt that Christopher was growing pudgy — the importance of a good, healthy diet. The very next day, Christopher’s mother came to Mr. Carroll, bringing young Christopher with her — and the four boxes of doughnuts he had been eating. Mr. Carroll decided to teach the boy a lesson. He said, “Christopher, you sit down here. You are going to eat every one of those doughnuts before you get on the ice. And you’re not moving from here until every one is gone.” After the boy had eaten the doughnuts, Mr. Carroll made him practice spins until finally young Christopher exited the ice and vomited.
• In 1977, when she was 14 years old, tennis star Tracy Austin played Holland’s Betty Stove in the quarterfinals of the United States Open. The older, bigger, heavier, and stronger Ms. Stove defeated her, then joked that young Tracy needed to drink more milk. Apparently, Tracy followed her advice. The following year, in the final match of a Stuttgart, West Germany, tournament, Tracy defeated Ms. Stove to win her first tournament as a professional tennis player.
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Casbah"
Album: ULTIMATE SUMMER HITS
Artist: Llobarros
Artist Location: Valencia, Spain
Record Company: kafadan kontak
Record Company Location: Istanbul, Turkey
Info: This is a 19-track compilation of surf music by various artists.
“Kafadan Kontak Records, a do-it-yourself record label and booking organization firm based in Istanbul. Specialized on punk, garage, surf, rocknroll, lofi and seppuku.”
Price: Name Your Price (Includes FREE) for track or for 19-track album
Genre: Surf. Garage.
Links:
ULTIMATE SUMMER HITS
kafadan kontak on Bandcamp
Llobarros on Bandcamp
Other Links:
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
New Venture
Michael Egan
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
This coming Monday the epage will have been around for 20 years.
Moves Away From Oscars Weekend
Indie Spirit Awards
In a break from tradition, the Film Independent Spirit Awards are moving away from Oscars weekend. The 37th annual awards ceremony will now take place on Sunday, March 6, three weeks before the Academy Awards on March 27, the nonprofit organization Film Independent said Thursday.
The Spirit Awards have long been held on the Saturday before the Oscars as a casual, beachside, afternoon fete. While the show won’t be able to benefit from attendees already in town for the Oscars, it does mean the awards could now influence Oscars voting.
“The Spirit Awards have always championed diverse, unique, independent storytelling; shifting earlier in the awards season will allow us to shine an even brighter light on the films and shows we are excited to celebrate,” said Josh Welsh, President of Film Independent, in a statement.
The 2022 ceremony is also moving to an evening affair and will begin at 5 p.m. EST.
Indie Spirit Awards
Prime Time
Ratings
Shark Week just finished its 33rd edition on Discovery, a television event so old that one advertising executive joked it could have its own children.
Discovery programs averaged 687,000 viewers in prime time last week, oddly lower than the previous week, although there was competition from the NBA Finals and baseball’s All-Star Game. The first night of Shark Week, July 11, is the most popular and was counted in last week’s Nielsen company figures. Viewing increased among viewers aged 18-to-49, an indication that the network’s audience composition was different than typical weeks.
Benefiting from their sports events, ABC averaged 4.1 million viewers in prime time last week, and Fox had 2.9 million. NBC had 2.6 million, CBS had 2.4 million, Univision had 1.6 million, Ion Television had 1.1 million and Telemundo had 1 million.
ABC’s “World News Tonight” led the evening news ratings race, averaging 7.6 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” had 6.1 million viewers and the “CBS Evening News” had 4.7 million.
For the week of July 12-18, the 20 most-watched programs, their networks and viewerships:
1. NBA Finals: Phoenix at Milwaukee, Game 4, ABC, 10.26 million.
2. NBA Finals: Milwaukee at Phoenix, Game 5, ABC, 9.62 million.
3. Baseball: All-Star Game, Fox, 9.62 million.
4. “America’s Got Talent,” NBC, 7.1 million.
5. “Home Run Derby,” ESPN, 6.29 million.
6. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 5.96 million.
7. “Celebrity Family Feud,” ABC, 4.84 million.
8. “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” ABC, 3.95 million.
9. “NCIS,” CBS, 3.925 million.
10. “Home Run Derby Prelude,” ESPN, 3.925.
11. “The Chase,” ABC, 3.83 million.
12. “Big Brother” (Thursday), CBS, 3.81 million.
13. “The Bachelorette,” ABC, 3.71 million.
14. Soccer: Mexico vs. El Salvador, Univision, 3.64 million.
15. “Big Brother” (Wednesday), CBS, 3.63 million.
16. “NBA Countdown” (Wednesday), ABC, 3.5 million.
17. “Big Brother” (Sunday), CBS, 3.49 million.
18. “The Neighborhood,” CBS, 3.36 million.
19. “American Ninja Warrior,” NBC, 3.32 million.
20. “To Tell the Truth,” ABC, 3.26 million.
Ratings
Won’t Return
Sean Penn
After returning from the Cannes launch of his film Flag Day, Sean Penn has drawn a line in the sand, one that challenges Hollywood leadership to go further in imposing vaccination requirements for everyone on a film or TV set.
In a move that likely will reverberate across an industry still trying to deal with Covid, Penn is refusing to return to work on Gaslit — the UCP-produced Starz limited series he stars in with Julia Roberts — until everyone on the production has been vaccinated for the virus. With the highly contagious Delta variant raging enough that Los Angeles has re-imposed indoor mask wearing and cases among the unvaccinated are spiking again at alarming levels across the country, Penn has insisted to the production that the vaccinatipn of everyone must be mandatory. Through his organization, CORE, Penn has offered to facilitate the vaccination effort, free of charge.
Gaslight’s studio, NBCUniversal, this week mandated mandatory vaccinations in “Zone A,” which constitutes the cast and those who come in close proximity. An email was sent out to cast and crew Wednesday informing that an on-site clinic was made available to provide free Covid vaccinations, done by the same vendor offering vaccinations to NBCUniversal and production crews on the upper lot. The memo said several vaccine choices are available, and the vendor will be back in 21 days to administer a second dose, if necessary. The memo also asked members of the production to present evidence of vaccination to the Covid testing team when they show up for their next shift on the production.
Not good enough, per Penn, who has a couple weeks left before he wraps.
Penn’s not doing this to embarrass the studio, or out of fear that he and the other stars might get exposed, because Penn has been fully vaccinated. This is based on the principle that to go unvaccinated puts everyone around you in jeopardy on a set, where crew that isn’t in Zone A still can come in proximity and potentially spread a variant just by being in the trailer of a cast member, for instance. This is one of the first examples of a filmmaker or star directly challenging Hollywood leaders to go further than a recent agreement, and impose strong rules on a production by requiring everyone to be vaccinated.
Sean Penn
Won’t Play
Clapton
Eric Clapton will not perform at venues that require proof of vaccination.
“Following the PM’s announcement on Monday the 19th of July 2021, I feel honour bound to make an announcement of my own: I wish to say that I will not perform on any stage where there is a discriminated audience present. Unless there is provision made for all people to attend, I reserve the right to cancel the show,” Clapton said via statement posted onto architect, film producer and anti-vaxxer Robin Monotti Graziadei’s Telegram account.
The news follows U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s announcement Tuesday that as restrictions on social gatherings lift, nightclubs must require guests to show a Covid Pass from the U.K.’s National Health Service upon entry for everyone over the age of 18.
Clapton has been releasing anti-vaccination and anti-lockdown statements and songs for close to a year now. In December 2020, Clapton joined fellow classic rocker turned anti-vaxxer Van Morrison on his song, “Stand and Deliver.” The song features lyrics including, “Do you wanna be a free man / Or do you wanna be a slave?” and “Dick Turpin wore a mask too.” Variety critics ranked it as one of the worst songs of 2020.
In an earlier release Clapton detailed a “disastrous” experience with the AstraZeneca vaccine for which he blamed “propaganda” for pushing on him. The musician continued on revealing that he suffers from “peripheral neuropathy and should never have gone near the needle.”
Clapton
Lose Appeals
House Members
Three Republican U.S. House members have lost appeals challenging fines for not wearing face coverings on the House floor earlier this year.
On Tuesday, the U.S. House Ethics Committee released statements noting that U.S. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Ralph Norman of South Carolina had failed in their appeals of $500 fines issued in May.
The Republicans challenged the fines in June, arguing that the mandate was out of sync with recent federal guidance on face coverings during the COVID-19 pandemic. The vote in question happened a week after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidance noting that “fully vaccinated people can resume activities without wearing a mask or physically distancing.”
At the time, face coverings were still required on the floor, a mandate put in place by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in June 2020. Even after the updated CDC guidance in May, Dr. Brian Monahan, Congress’ attending physician, wrote that “mask requirement and other guidelines remain unchanged until all Members and floor staff are fully vaccinated.”
House Members
Attacks Police Officer
Little Tucker
A Capitol police officer who Fox News host Tucker Carlson (R-Fauntleroy) brushed off as an “angry, left-wing political activist” has fired back at the host on social media.
The lawyers representing Harry Dunn, a Black police officer who claims he was called the N-word while fighting to defend lawmakers during the Capitol riot, issued a statement responding to Mr Carlson's attempt to downplay his story.
Mr Carlson's attacks on the officer appear to be an attempt undermine his credibility ahead of a House hearing on 27 July investigating the Capitol riot. Mr Dunn is expected to testify at that hearing.
“Tonight Fox News allowed its host Tucker Carlson, who has not served a day in uniform, whether military or law enforcement, to criticise the heroism and service of African-American US Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn,” attorneys David H Laufman and Mark S Zaid said in a statement following the segment.
“Our client has served 13 years in law enforcement and on January 6, 2021, fought against an insurrectionist violent crowd – no doubt many of them Carlson’s supporters – to protect the lives of our elected officials, including Vice President Pence,” they wrote.
Little Tucker
Pat Garrett's Gun To Be Sold
Billy the Kid
One of the most iconic weapons of the American Wild West goes up for auction next month with the sale of the gun that killed 19th century outlaw Billy the Kid.
Sheriff Pat Garrett's Colt single action revolver is expected to fetch between $2 million and $3 million at auction, Bonhams auction house said on Wednesday. He used the firearm to take down gunfighter Billy the Kid in 1881 after a months-long pursuit,
Bonhams described the gun as "the most iconic treasure of early Western history" in the United States.
The gun comes from the collection of Texas couple Jim and Theresa Earle who amassed Western firearms and other artifacts for some 50 years. Jim Earle died in 2019, and his family is now selling the collection.
Billy the Kid
Has Been Discovered
'Eye of Sauron'
Looking like the Eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, an ancient undersea volcano was slowly revealed by multibeam sonar 3,100 meters (10,170 ft) below our vessel, 280 kilometers (174 miles) southeast of Christmas Island.
This was on day 12 of our voyage of exploration to Australia's Indian Ocean Territories, aboard CSIRO's dedicated ocean research vessel, the RV Investigator.
Previously unknown and unimagined, this volcano emerged from our screens as a giant oval-shaped depression called a caldera, 6.2 km by 4.8 km across. It is surrounded by a 300-m-high rim (resembling Sauron's eyelids), and has a 300-m-high cone-shaped peak at its center (the 'pupil').
A caldera is formed when a volcano collapses. The molten magma at the base of the volcano shifts upwards, leaving empty chambers. The thin solid crust on the surface of the dome then collapses, creating a large crater-like structure. Often, a small new peak then begins to form in the center as the volcano continues spewing magma.
One well-known caldera is the one at Krakatoa in Indonesia, which exploded in 1883, killing tens of thousands of people and leaving only bits of the mountain rim visible above the waves. By 1927, a small volcano, Anak Krakatoa ("child of Krakatoa"), had grown in its center.
'Eye of Sauron'
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