from Bruce
Anecdotes
Fame
• In the late 1970s, gymnast Leslie Russo was a top contender to represent the United States at the Moscow Olympic Games—which the U.S. ended up boycotting. As such, she was a teenage celebrity and kids from school would sometimes ask her for her autograph. She often replied, “You know me. You don’t need my autograph.” At other times, her schoolmates would ask, “Hey, Les. You going anyplace international this month?” Such fame did have its disadvantages, since some boys at school were too awed to ask her out on dates. She once said, “I’d like to meet somebody who treats me as an average person. Somebody’s who’s nice—and cute.”
• When she was a young tennis player, Monica Seles liked celebrities. At her very first Wimbledon, she glimpsed Princess Diana in the stands. This awed her so much that she couldn’t concentrate on tennis and she was quickly defeated.
Fans
• While playing for the Washington Mystics, professional women’s basketball player Chamique “Meek” Holdsclaw wore the number—23—of her favorite male professional basketball player: Michael Jordan. However, she did not choose that number because of Mr. Jordan—23 is the number of her favorite psalm. Actually, fans treat her much the same way that they treat Mr. Jordan. After she had won an award, a woman fan jumped on the stage, shook her hand, and said, “I think you are the best player ever!” Asked if that kind of thing happened often to her, Ms. Holdsclaw replied, “Yeah, kind of. But it’s OK.” And when Ms. Holdsclaw’s college team—the Tennessee Lady Vols—met Mr. Jordan, he did not need to be introduced to her—he already knew who she was, and he asked her, “What’s up, Meek?”
• At the 1974 World Championships in Munich, West Germany, Dorothy Hamill was on the ice warming up when the results of another figure skater were announced. The audience members thought that the scores were low, and they booed, making Ms. Hamill cry and skate over to her coach for reassurance because she thought that the boos were meant for her. The audience members realized what had happened and gave her a wondrous ovation when she went back out on the ice, and Ms. Hamill responded by winning a World Championship in ladies figure skating.
• After gymnast Mary Lou Retton won several medals, including the gold medal in the All-Around, at the 1984 Olympic Games, fans descended on the home of her parents in Fairmont, West Virginia, in search of souvenirs. They tore chunks of sod out of her parents’ front lawn and took them home, and someone stole her parents’ mailbox. When fan letters arrived for Mary Lou later, they had to be taken to the front door because her family no longer had a mailbox.
• Dick Stuart never won a Golden Glove award, but he did receive an ovation from the fans when he caught a bat that slipped from a batter’s hands and bounced to first base. Afterward, he was asked if that was the greatest ovation he had ever received. He replied, “Heck, no. One night in Pittsburgh 30,000 fans gave me a standing ovation when I caught a hot-dog wrapper on the fly.”
• At the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, Wilma Rudolph became an international celebrity after winning three gold medals in track and field. Returning home, she was besieged by fans. One overeager souvenir hunter even pulled off Ms. Rudolph’s shoes and ran away with them.
Fathers
• Andra Douglas’ father enjoyed hunting, and he belonged to a hunt club whose members frequently brought their sons along during hunts. When she was eight or nine years old, Andra begged to be taken along. At first, her father explained that girls weren’t allowed at the club, but then he said, “What’s the harm?” He got her outfitted in hunting gear—including a gun—and took her along on a hunt, which she enjoyed. They hunted together for weeks, but finally some of the other men in the hunt club called a meeting about her and told her father that she wasn’t allowed to hunt any more because she was a little girl. Her father stood up for her rights and said that if he couldn’t bring his daughter to hunts then he would quit the hunt club. Her father’s friend, Howard, backed him up. If the little girl couldn’t hunt, then he also would quit the hunt club. A bunch of other friends said the same thing, and early the next morning, Andra and her father were out in the woods of the hunt club, hunting. (By the way, Andra grew up to play quarterback in the Women’s Professional Football League.)
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
~ marty
U.S.A. replied:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Purple Power"
Album: This is a one-sided single.
Artist: The Space Agency
Artist Location: Hove, England, UK
Info:
Kahuna Cole, a fan, wrote, “There's enough juice in this track to make me want to lace up my Van Doren skateboard shoes and take my Hobie Super Surfer skateboard out for a spin through the neighborhood!”
Price: £1 (GBP) for track
Genre: Surf. Instrumental.
Links:
“Purple Power”
The Space Agency on Bandcamp
The Space Agency on YouTube
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
David E Suggests
VW Campervans
David
Thanks, Dave!
New Venture
Michael Egan
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
From Bruce
A Tweet by Paul Krugman
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.
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
Between Tom Selleck and Larry Elder, I'm talking back at the TV again.
Trebek's List Of Potential Successors
'Jeopardy!'
Alex Trebek didn't believe Jeopardy!'s success had to do with its host. But that theory is about to be tested if Mike Richards takes the reins.
Richards — who may or may not have appointed himself — was officially named as Trebek's replacement last week. Sony's announcement came amid resurfaced reports the longtime EP helped fuel a misogynistic and toxic work culture on The Price Is Right. Richards denied past discrimination claims but is coming under fire again as The Ringer unearthed sexist comments he made on an old podcast. The unnecessary drama is causing a lot of fans to wonder if this is what Trebek would have wanted.
The legendary host actually named some potential successors in a 2018 interview that's going viral on Thursday. While speaking with TMZ, Trebek specifically mentioned two possible hosts: L.A. Kings hockey announcer Alex Faust and CNN's Laura Coates.
It's irony of Coates's omission from Jeopardy!'s rotating lineup of guest hosts that's not lost on many — especially as only one Black woman, Robin Roberts, made the cut.
'Jeopardy!'
Kitty Has Claws
Fabio
Today we know Fabio as the king of romance, the guy who appeared on more than 1,300 steamy novels throughout the '90s. He posed as a pilot, a pirate, a cowboy and a winged angel. (He also played the pope in Sharknado 5.) But, as he tells Jason Sheeler and Andrea Lavinthal on the season finale of PEOPLE in the '90s, "I can only be Fabio."
Born in Milan, Fabio Lanzoni was modeling all over his hometown by the time he hit his teens. His father, who ran one of the world's first conveyor belt factories, wasn't thrilled. Fabio, the middle of three, was expected to join the family business. "You want to be a mannequin? And not a man?" he says that his father asked incredulously.
Fabio kept trying to make his dad proud. He asserts he was the first male supermodel; he says at one point making more than Cindy Crawford. He became the face of Versace's Mediterraneum fragrance in the early '90s.
"The Versace campaign was extremely successful at that time," Fabio says, "because it was the biggest contract a model— not just a male model, a model — ever got. So I got a contract even bigger than Cindy Crawford and the rest of the female models."
But Fabio says he was never fully paid. He says the late Gianni Versace owed him money. "Big time. A million," Fabio asserts. "You know, unfortunately Versace wasn't a very honest man, God bless his soul, but the truth is the truth. He wasn't a very honest person." (Representatives for the Versace brand had no comment.)
Fabio
Academy Of Country Music Awards To Stream
Amazon Prime
Amazon Prime Video continues its expansion into live programming. After taking exclusive rights to NFL’s Thursday Night Football in a precedent-setting digital deal, the streamer has made a deal for the 57th Academy of Country Music Awards. The 2022 telecast, produced by MRC’s dick clark productions, marks the first time a major awards show live-streamed exclusively on an SVOD platform. (The Daytime Emmys have been only available online a couple of times.)
Launched in 1966, the Academy of Country Music Awards has aired exclusively on broadcast — on ABC (1972-78), NBC (1979-97) and, most recently on CBS (1998-2021).
The three-hour 2021 telecast, hosted by Keith Urban and Mickey Guyton, drew a 0.8 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic and 6.1 million (Live+Same Day) in April, marking the lowest-rated and least watched ACM Awards to date but still topping all of broadcast in the demo and drew larger audience than its network competitors combined.
According to sources, CBS opted not to renew its deal for the ACM Awards as the network is focusing on growing the company-owned CMT Music Awards following the ViacomCBS merger. Last month, the network announced that the 2022 CMT Music Awards will air on CBS in April, the same month ACM Awards has traditionally taken place. Date and location for the 2022 ACM Awards will be unveiled at a later time.
Amazon Prime
Tour Bus Crashes
Blues Traveler
Blues Traveler’s tour bus crashed on Thursday morning in Minnesota. Fortunately, the members of the band are safe and said to have sustained minor injuries.
“This morning our tour bus went off the road and crossed the median,” the band announced on Facebook. “Thankfully we are all safe and have only sustained minor injuries. Our sincere gratitude to the Winona MN, Police Department and Rescue Crew for their help getting us safely off the highway and out of oncoming traffic.”
The accident occurred as the band drove to Rochester, Min. for a show with JJ Grey & Mofro on Friday. No other vehicles were involved, but the band and crew were trapped inside the bus until law enforcement and first responders freed them from the vehicle.
Blues Traveler frontman John Popper shared his own account of the crash on Facebook, initially writing, “Bus just crashed!! Dunno what’s going on everything hurts… I think we’re stuck on the bus we’re all going to get checked but we’re still trying to get fucking door open… more later.”
According to a statement from Blues Traveler, “The band and crew are shaken but are safe and will perform as scheduled in Rochester, Minn., tomorrow.”
Blues Traveler
Because They Can
Microsoft
Microsoft Corp on Thursday said it will raise prices as much as 20% for a bundle of software called Microsoft 365 that includes popular apps like Teams and Outlook.
The increases will take effect within six months, Microsoft said in a blog post announcing the change.
The Microsoft 365 suite is the cornerstone of the company's productivity and business process segment, which had sales of $53.9 billion in its most recent fiscal year, about a third of Microsoft's overall $168 billion in sales.
The increases will affect commercial customers and are the first since Microsoft rolled out the service a decade ago. Jared Spataro, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365, said the company has added two dozen apps to the suite since it launched.
At the low end, basic business plans will rise 20% from $5 per user to $6, while the highest-end versions of the suite will have a smaller rise of 12.5% from $32 to $36 per user.
Microsoft
Wrongly Convicted ‘Witch’
Massachusetts
More than three centuries after a Massachusetts woman was wrongly convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death, she’s finally on the verge of being exonerated — thanks to a curious eighth-grade civics class.
State Sen. Diana DiZoglio, a Democrat from Methuen, has introduced legislation to clear the name of Elizabeth Johnson Jr., who was condemned in 1693 at the height of the Salem Witch Trials but never executed.
DiZoglio says she was inspired by sleuthing done by a group of 13- and 14-year-olds at North Andover Middle School. Civics teacher Carrie LaPierre’s students painstakingly researched Johnson and the steps that would need to be taken to make sure she was formally pardoned.
“It is important that we work to correct history,” DiZoglio said Wednesday. “We will never be able to change what happened to these victims, but at the very least, we can set the record straight.”
If lawmakers approve the measure, Johnson will be the last accused witch to be cleared, according to Witches of Massachusetts Bay, a group devoted to the history and lore of the 17th-century witch hunts.
Massachusetts
The Robot Guide
Persephone
Persephone is a tour guide in Greece, but perhaps not the type people are used to.
Billed as the world’s first robot tour guide inside a cave, Persephone has been welcoming visitors since mid-July to the Alistrati Cave in northern Greece, 135 kilometers (84 miles) northeast of the city of Thessaloniki.
The multilingual robot covers the first 150 meters (roughly 500 feet) of the part of the cave that is open to the public. In the remaining 750 meters (2,400 feet), a human guide takes over.
The robot was named Persephone because, according to one version of the ancient Greek myth, it was in a nearby plain that Pluto — the god of the underworld who was also known as Hades — abducted Persephone, with the consent of her father Zeus, to take her as his wife.
The robot can give its part of the tour in 33 languages and interact at a basic level with visitors in three languages. It can also answer 33 questions, but only in Greek.
Persephone
Use Auditory Illusion
Rattlesnakes
The menacing rattle of a rattlesnake's tail is far more sophisticated than first thought, as the structure can create an auditory illusion that suggests the venomous snake is closer to a potential threat than it really is, according to a new study.
Scientists think that rattlesnakes "rattle" the keratin structure on their tails to warn off predators, gradually increasing the frequency as a possible attacker gets closer. But now they've found the snake may have another trick in its arsenal — a sudden frequency jump in the rattling sound that it uses to fool its listener.
"Our data show that the acoustic display of rattlesnakes, which has been interpreted for decades as a simple acoustic warning signal about the presence of the snake, is in fact a far more intricate interspecies communication signal," senior study author Boris Chagnaud, a professor of neurobiology at Karl-Franzens-University Graz in Austria, said in a statement.
Chagnaud discovered the first clue to the mystery of rattlesnakes' "smart signal" high-frequency mode while approaching one of the snakes during a visit to a laboratory. He noticed that the frequency of the snake's iconic rattle increased before suddenly jumping as he approached, but decreased as he retreated.
To figure out what was behind this phenomenon, he and his team recorded the frequency of the rattle as various objects — including a human-like torso and a black disk — were brought closer to the snake. As threats first approached, the rattling rose by a steady rate to a frequency of 40 Hz, but as the objects came closer, the frequency suddenly jumped to between 60 and 100 Hz. According to the researchers, the rattling rate increased more quickly the faster the object approached, but changing the size of the object didn't impact the frequency level.
Rattlesnakes
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