from Bruce
Anecdotes
Comedy and Comedians
• Normally, Jack Benny was not funny without his writers, but at least once he got off a funny ad lib. It happened when he was a guest on Fred Allen’s radio show, and Mr. Allen — who was funny with or without writers — was zinging Mr. Benny with ad-lib comic insults. Finally, Mr. Benny blurted out, “You wouldn’t dare say that if my writers were here.”
• Before becoming a comedian, Roseanne used to work as a waitress and insult her customers. After someone ordered, she would say such things as “Those drinks are gonna be six bucks, and it’ll cost you three more to have me take ’em off the tray and put ’em on the table.” She was so good that customers came in just so she could insult them.
• After comedian Margaret Cho became famous, one of the people who had emotionally tortured her when they were children came to one of her shows, walked up to her backstage afterwards, and asked her, “Do you remember me?” She replied, “No, I don’t. I have absolutely no idea who you are,” and then she walked away.
• It’s hard to put on Jonathan Winters. Pat Harrington, Jr., used to pretend to be an Italian golf pro with the name Guido Panzini. While in character, he would go up to unsuspecting people and give them golf tips. Once, he went up to Mr. Winters, who looked him over, said “Irish,” and then he walked away.
• Comedian Larry Miller once opened for Frank Sinatra in Las Vegas. Before showtime, Mr. Sinatra walked into his dressing room just as Mr. Miller was pulling up his pants. As Mr. Miller reached to shake hands, his pants fell to the floor and he let them remain there until Mr. Sinatra left. Mr. Miller says, “He was very cool — he didn’t say a word about it.”
• Stand-up comedian Judy Tenuta once worked in a dive so bad that a rat ran across the stage when she was introduced. The owner of the dive killed it — by shooting it with a .357 Magnum.
Critics
• Music critic Henry T. Finck enjoyed collecting anecdotes and stories. For example: 1) Lilli Lehmann used an interesting method to teach Geraldine Farrar how to act without the use of extravagant hand gestures. She would tie Ms. Farrar’s hands behind her back, and then say to her, “Now express your feelings.” 2) Some artists dislike encores. Conductor Arturo Toscanini was one. On occasion, so was Enrico Caruso. Once, members of an audience kept clapping their hands, yelling, and stamping their feet because they wanted an encore of “Una fertiva lagrima.” Mr. Caruso did not wish to oblige. He kept saying, “Hush,” to the audience, which ignored him. Finally, he carried a chair onto the stage and sat in it with his back to the audience until he was able to continue without singing an encore. 3) The Australian explorer Carl Lumholtz once told Mr. Finck about an encounter with a cannibal who asked him to walk in back because when Mr. Lumholtz walked in front, the cannibal was tempted to put a spear in his back and make a meal of him. Mr. Finck and Mr. Lumholtz once ate supper together; the main dish was terrapin liver, a delicacy, but Mr. Lumholtz confessed that it was good, but he liked python liver better.
• The inaugural performance of the Metropolitan Opera in Lincoln Center was an opera by an American composer: Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra. Unfortunately, the performance was critically panned. Even before the performance, Sir Rudolf Bing knew that the production was likely to be a failure. When he met soprano Leontyne Price’s mother just before the performance, she said, “I had envisioned you as a much larger man.” Sir Rudolf replied, “Until a week ago, I was.”
• The people who make money from dance and the people who criticize dance sometimes have somewhat different perceptions of the role of dance criticism. Dance impresario Sol Hurok once told dance critic Clive Barnes, “You know, Clive, the critic’s job is to sell tickets.” He replied, “Sol, you are absolutely right, but we get to choose the tickets we feel are worth selling.”
• A critic objected to George Balanchine’s choreography of Apollo and asked him, “Young man, where did you ever see Apollo walking on his knees?” Refusing to be intimidated, Mr. Balanchine replied, “I would ask you: Where did you ever see Apollo?”
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
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Michael Egan
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
Andrew Tobias
Andrew Tobias: The Right Way To Think About What’s Going On
.
Enough with the gloom and doom!
The stock market is at record highs. Unemployment is near record lows. Anyone who wants a job can get one. Wages are rising.
Taxes are about to go up on the wealthy — whose talent, hard work, good luck, and inheritance we should celebrate — to help pay for massive, long overdue investments to revitalize our infrastructure, including the electric grid and more-widely-available broadband, and to lower health care costs and the cost of raising kids.
And to confront the climate crisis.
And to get the economic pendulum, so long swinging toward the uber-wealthy, swinging back somewhat.
These are fantastic things.
We’ve ended our endless war in Afghanistan and evacuated 124,000 of those most at risk.
We’ve rejoined the Paris Accord and the community of nations, reestablished the dignity of the Presidency, reimposed ethical norms, restored the independence of the Justice Department, cut child poverty in half, vaccinated the majority of the country.
We’ve staved off autocracy, at least for now.
All sorts of terrible things are possible down the road — but it’s also possible the surprise will be on the upside. Especially if we keep our heads down and keep at it.
After a time, fuel and food prices could fall. Supply chain problems, the “fault” of the pandemic and the free market, could ameliorate (with help from the Administration wherever requested).
After a time, the truth about January 6 could come out — Liz Cheney and Adam Schiff are pretty tough cookies.
To read the rest, go to andrewtobias.com/the-right-way-to-think-about-whats-going-on/
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useo contribution
colbert
I love to laugh with Colbert. Here's what I imagine he said.
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Current Events
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We are all only temporarily able bodied.
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In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Back to sunny and seasonal.
SAG Life Achievement Award
Helen Mirren
The Screen Actors Guild has selected Dame Helen Mirren as their 57th Life Achievement Award Recipient, the union said Thursday.
The 76-year-old English stage and screen actor has credits spanning over 50 years and has played everything from a gangster’s girlfriend in “The Long Good Friday” to Queen Elizabeth II in “The Queen.” Mirren will be adding this latest honor to a robust collection of awards including an Oscar, a Tony, and multiple SAG, Emmy and BAFTA Awards.
With 13 SAG Awards nominations and five wins, Mirren is also the most decorated SAG Life Achievement recipient, the union said.
The 28th annual SAG Awards will be broadcast live from Santa Monica, Calif. on Feb. 27 on TNT and TBS at 8 p.m. ET.
Helen Mirren
Billie Eilish, Paul Rudd
‘SNL’
“Saturday Night Live” has set Billie Eilish and Paul Rudd as the hosts of its final shows of 2021, NBC announced Thursday.
While Eilish will make her hosting debut on the sketch series (she was previously on “SNL” as musical guest), Rudd is joining the Five-Timers Club with this Studio 8H gig.
Eilish will host “Saturday Night Live” on Dec. 11 and appear as her own musical guest. She will be promoting her sophomore album, “Happier Than Ever,” which launched at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.
On Dec. 18, Rudd will host “SNL,” marking his fifth time doing the job. Right now, Rudd is making the rounds to talk up his new movie “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” which hits theaters Friday, and Apple TV+’s “The Shrink Next Door.”
Charli XCX will be Rudd’s musical guest. This will be the second time the singer, who releases her second album, “Crash,” March 18, has performed on “SNL.”
‘SNL’
Gets Last Laugh
Netflix
It’s a blast from the past and the ultimate revenge — Netflix has given a 10-episode series order to Blockbuster, a single-camera workplace comedy starring Randall Park, which is set in the last remaining Blockbuster video store.
There is a lot of symbolism — and irony — in the pickup given Netflix and Blockbuster’s complicated history. Netflix originated as an underdog movie rental upstart that was almost crushed by then-dominant giant Blockbuster Video. Netflix co-founders Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings actually tried selling the company to Blockbuster for $50 million in 2000 but were rebuffed. The duo vowed to take Blockbuster down, and Hastings went on to build Netflix into one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world, while Blockbuster ceased operations in 2014.
Blockbuster, the series, is produced by Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group, and studio-based Davis Entertainment.
Blockbuster is an ensemble comedy that takes place in the last Blockbuster Video in America, that explores what it takes – and more specifically who it takes – for a small business to succeed against all odds.
Blockbuster’s last store, located in Bend, Oregon, was the subject of the 2020 documentary The Last Blockbuster.
Netflix
Neutral Pronoun Included
Le Petit Robert
It’s a neutral pronoun that’s proving anything but: A nonbinary pronoun added to an esteemed French dictionary has ignited a fierce linguistic squabble in the country.
Le Petit Robert introduced the word “iel” — an amalgamation of “il” (he) and “elle” (she) — to its online edition last month. While the term is gaining currency among young people, it is still far from being widely used, or even understood, by many French speakers.
Though at first the change went mostly unnoticed, boisterous debate broke out this week in a nation that prides itself on its human rights tradition but that also fiercely protects its cultural heritage from foreign meddling. In one camp are the traditionalists, including some political leaders, who criticize the move as a sign that France is lurching toward an American-style “woke” ideology. In the other is a new generation of citizens who embrace nonbinary as the norm.
“It is very important that dictionaries include the ‘iel’ pronoun in their referencing as it reflects how the use of the term is now well accepted,” said Dorah Simon Claude, a 32-year-old doctoral student who identifies as “iel.”
Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer is not in the same camp. He went to Twitter on Wednesday to say that “inclusive writing is not the future of the French language.” The 56-year-old former law professor warned that schoolchildren should not use “iel” as a valid term despite its inclusion in Le Robert, seen as a linguistic authority on French since 1967.
Le Petit Robert
New York Times Blocked
Project Veritas
A New York trial judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the New York Times from publishing some materials concerning the conservative activist group Project Veritas, a rare step that the newspaper said violated decades of First Amendment protections for the process.
The order by Justice Charles Wood of the Westchester County Supreme Court covers memos written by a Project Veritas lawyer and obtained by the Times.
Wood scheduled a hearing for next Tuesday to consider a longer prohibition against publication, and whether the Times should remove references to privileged attorney-client information in a Nov. 11 article about Project Veritas' journalism practices.
"This ruling is unconstitutional and sets a dangerous precedent," Dean Baquet, the Times' executive editor, said in an emailed statement.
Baquet's statement referred to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1971 rejection of the Nixon administration's bid to stop the Times and the Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers, which detailed U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.
Project Veritas
Arsonist
California
A former college professor was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday for allegedly starting four wildfires in Northern California earlier this year that threatened to trap firefighters as they battled a massive fire nearby, federal prosecutors said.
Gary Stephen Maynard, 47, faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each count of arson to federal property, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California said in a statement.
According to court documents, Maynard’s alleged arson spree included blazes he started in July and August behind crews fighting the Dixie Fire, which became the second biggest wildfire in California history, scorching more than 1,500 square miles (3,900 square kilometers) and destroying more than 1,000 structures.
Federal prosecutors say Maynard, a resident of San Jose, set four blazes: the Cascade and Everitt fires, on July 20 and 21, and the Ranch and Conard Fires on Aug. 7.
Maynard appears to have taught briefly at Santa Clara University and Sonoma State University, where a Gary Maynard was listed as a lecturer in criminal justice studies specializing in criminal justice, cults and deviant behavior. He is no longer with either school.
California
In The Human Body
Fastest Acceleration
In Marvel's "Avengers: Infinity War," supervillain Thanos uses a simple gesture — a snap of a finger — to destroy half of all life in the universe. But the mass-murdering comic book character not only would have failed to wreak devastation; he wouldn't have even been able to snap his fingers, according to a new study.
Using high-speed cameras and state-of-the-art force sensors, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology measured the speed and acceleration of finger snapping and studied the little-known physics that makes it possible. They found that a finger snap is the fastest acceleration of the human body ever measured — and that the physics involved would have made it impossible for Thanos to perform the apocalyptic gesture, at least while he was wearing his metal "Infinity Gauntlet."
Their results, published Nov. 17 in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, show that the maximal rotational velocities of the finger snap are 7,800 degrees per second and the maximal rotational acceleration is 1.6 million degrees per second squared — a blistering three times the acceleration produced by a professional baseball player's arm.
"When I first saw the data, I jumped out of my chair," study senior author Saad Bhamla, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said in a statement. "The finger snap occurs in only seven milliseconds — more than 20 times faster than the blink of an eye, which takes more than 150 milliseconds."
Bhamla said the inspiration for the research came from an argument he had with his students after watching the 2018 Marvel Studios movie "Avengers: Infinity War," in which Thanos, an 8-foot (2.4 meter) purple warlord from Saturn's moon Titan, seeks out six powerful "Infinity Stones" that will grant him the ability to bend and reshape the fabric of the universe according to his will. By placing the stones inside a metal "Infinity Gauntlet," Thanos planned to wipe out half of all the living creatures in the universe with a mere snap of his fingers.
Fastest Acceleration
Brain Scans
Grandmas
The connection between grandmother and grandkids is a special one.
It turns out this bond is visible in the brain, according to a small study of neural snapshots captured by a team of Emory University researchers and published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The team gathered 50 grandmas who each had at least one biological grandchild between the ages of three and 12. They used MRI to measure the grannies' brain function as they viewed photos of their grandchildren, compared with pictures of their grown-up children and unknown kids and adults.
The "cute factor" of young kids likely played a role in the results, which reflected a stronger emotional response to the grandchildren, lead author James Rilling said in a press release.
While the grandmas showed some cognitive empathy — trying to understand what someone is thinking and why — when viewing images of their adult children, they didn't exhibit the same level of emotional activation.
Grandmas
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