from Bruce
Anecdotes
Audiences
• When he was a young man acting in England, Jerome K. Jerome traveled with a troupe that had only one backdrop for representing a cottage interior. In one particular play, it had to be used to represent the interiors of four different cottages — the actors simply altered the on-stage furniture while using the same backdrop. Unfortunately, some audience members weren’t amused by the play, so they decided to amuse themselves with the backdrop. Whenever a couple of scenes had passed without the use of the backdrop, audience members called out to ask about its welfare and whether it had been lost, and whenever the backdrop made a belated appearance, the audience cheered and shouted, “Who said it was lost?”
• John Gielgud and Mrs. Patrick Campbell once played to nearly empty houses in Ibsen’s Ghosts, and so Mrs. Campbell occasionally remarked to Mr. Gielgud on stage, “The Marquis and Marchioness of Empty are in front again.”
Baseball
• In 1905, one of baseball’s greatest fans attended a Detroit game. In the 11th inning of a closely contested game, the umpire, Jack Sheridan, was given a message to announce to the spectators: “Is S.D. Reed in the stands? He is wanted at home. His house is on fire.” Mr. Reed was in the stands, but he replied, “I’m not leaving. I couldn’t get home in time to do anything about the fire anyway, so let the damn house burn.”
• One of the best baseball batters of all time is Stan Musial. Joe Garagiola once caught for a young pitcher who was facing Mr. Musial. Mr. Garagiola kept giving signs for pitches, but the pitcher kept shaking them off. Finally, Mr. Garagiola went to the pitcher’s mound and asked the young pitcher what he wanted to throw against Mr. Musial. “Nothing,” the pitcher replied. “I want to hold the ball as long as possible.”
• Baseball manager Dick Williams was not popular. He was thrown out of a game one night, and he was so mad at the beginning of the next game that he wouldn’t come out of the dugout to give the umpires his starting lineup. Instead, he sent out a pitcher, Bryn Smith, to do it. Mr. Smith greeted the umpires by saying, “Any chance of throwing him out again?”
Books
• James Abbott McNeill Whistler did not write the title of his book, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. At first, Mr. Whistler had intended to have a man named Sheridan Ford research his letters to editors and get credit for publishing them, but then he decided to have them published himself. Mr. Ford then proceeded to try to publish a pirated text of Mr. Whistler’s correspondence with the media. A printer in Antwerp, Belgium, disliked Mr. Ford’s original title, The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler, and choose to use as a title six words from Mr. Ford’s introduction to the book. Mr. Whistler found out about the pirated edition of the book and suppressed it, but he helped himself to Mr. Ford’s title.
• Isaac Asimov wrote his autobiography for Doubleday, but after writing 50 pages, he discovered that he had gotten only as far as his first three years of life, meaning that his autobiography would be huge. His friend and fellow science-fiction writer Ben Bova visited him and saw the many pages of typed manuscript that Mr. Asimov was pouring out. Mr. Asimov explained, “In this autobiography, I’m including every stupid thing I can remember having said or done.” Mr. Bova joked, “No wonder it’s so long.”
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Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Who’s to Blame"
Album: SONGS FROM THE CLATCH CAVE, VOLUME 1
Artist: Half Deaf Clatch
Artist Location: United Kingdom
Record Company: Speak Up Recordings
Record Company Location: United Kingdom
Info: “Independent label for the recording projects of Andrew McLatchie (aka Half Deaf Clatch). Slightly strange musicianer.”
Carsten Pieper, a fan, wrote, “A handful of his trademark stripped-down alt-blues to entertain us in self-isolation — thanks a lot! Three covers and two original songs. His ‘Vader Blues’ is hilarious! Favorite track: ‘Vader Blues.’”
Price: Name Your Price (Includes FREE) for five-track EP
Genre: Blues. Country.
Links:
SONGS FROM THE CLATCH CAVE, VOLUME 1
Speak Up Recordings
Half Deaf Clatch on YouTube
Half Deaf Clatch Official Website
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
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
Stephen Suggests
Superman
I did not know that department
Stephen F
Thanks, Stephen!
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
So, at 5am when I called it a day, the local weather weasel was saying the day would be partially overcast, and a slight chance of some misting or light rain up against the eastern foothills.
Started raining around lunchtime, and now, with the last Seth Meyers of 2021 in the background, 2 miles from the coast (and 30 miles from the eastern foothills) it's still raining.
100th Birthday Celebration
Betty White
Betty White will invite her fans to celebrate her 100th birthday with “Betty White: 100 Years Young — A Birthday Celebration,” a one-day only theatrical event distributed by Fathom Events. The event was announced by Fathom Events on Thursday.
The movie event will screen in 900 movie theaters nationwide on Jan. 17, 2022, the day of White’s centenary. Screenings will begin at local times of 1 p.m. and 7 p.m.. Tickets are now available for purchase.
Filmmakers Steve Boettcher and Mike Trinklein were given exclusive access by White to craft “100 Years Young.” The event will offer a look into the beloved star’s behind-the-scenes life, her relationship with her office staff and her efforts as an animal advocate. “100 Years Young” will also welcome viewers into White’s birthday party, with a guest list that includes Ryan Reynolds, Tina Fey, Robert Redford, Lin Manuel- Miranda, Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, Jay Leno, Carol Burnett, Craig Ferguson, Jimmy Kimmel, Valerie Bertinelli, James Corden, Wendy Malick and Jennifer Love Hewitt.
Additionally, the special event film will feature clips from White’s impressive career of screen acting credits, with footage from “Golden Girls,” “Saturday Night Live,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Hot in Cleveland” and her award-winning Super Bowl commercial for Snickers. “100 Years Young” will also feature a look at a lost episode from White’s ’50s sitcom days.
Betty White
Scripps National Spelling Bee
LeVar Burton
LeVar Burton has been hired as host of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, giving the competition a celebrity headliner who’s also a longtime literacy advocate as Scripps takes over production of the bee telecast.
Burton, who played Geordi La Forge on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and was the longtime host of the children’s educational program “Reading Rainbow,” told The Associated Press ahead of Thursday’s announcement by Scripps that he said yes immediately when approached about the hosting role. Burton comes from a family of educators and said the bee represents “the inspirational, aspirational ideal of education.”
“I want to normalize the pursuit of knowledge in this culture. That wouldn’t be a bad thing, would it?” Burton said. “Not just making stuff up and calling it a fact. Achievement through knowledge, scholarship, putting in the work to gain the reward.”
Burton described the opportunity as one of many that have come his way since his unsuccessful public campaign to become the permanent host of “Jeopardy!” (He will also serve as grand marshal of the upcoming Rose Parade.) His bid to succeed the late Alex Trebek attracted plenty of goodwill online while the show’s producers were roundly criticized for their decision to hire Mike Richards, who stepped down shortly thereafter when his past insensitive comments were revealed.
Burton’s hire comes at a time of transition for the bee, which has undergone several major changes since executive director J. Michael Durnil took over early this year. Scripps announced this fall it has ended its 27-year partnership with ESPN, which brought the bee to millions of viewers and promoted it like a major sporting event.
LeVar Burton
Exits ‘The Goldbergs’
Jeff Garlin
ABC’s long-running comedy The Goldbergs lost a series regular when George Segal died earlier this year. Now another star who plays a member of the Goldbergs clan, Jeff Garlin, is departing following multiple misconduct allegations and HR investigations.
According to sources, a mutual agreement was reached today that Garlin will not be returning to the show. His exit is effective immediately. Reps for Sony Pictures Television, which produces the comedy, had no comment.
Garlin was believed to have one more day of shooting left at the most this season, which consists of 18 episodes, after his schedule had been reduced. No decision has been made yet on a potential tenth season of The Goldbergs, which remains one of ABC’s strongest comedy series.
According to an eyewitness of the incident, Garlin did not appear to be joking as he walked behind the female stand-in. “He screamed at her, ‘why are you always in my way? Get the f*ck out of my way’ as she was walking down the ramp on the set after they had done blocking for a scene. She was confused and looked around.” Garlin then turned to the woman’s husband, saying, “tell your wife to get the f*ck out of my way”.
According to sources, cast and crew were appalled, and “this was was the straw that broke the camel’s back” in terms of their tolerance for Garlin’s antics, leading to new HR complaints.
Jeff Garlin
Judge Refuses To Dismiss Dominion Lawsuit
Rupert
A Delaware judge declined to toss out a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News filed by Dominion Voting Systems, which claims that the network “sold a false story of election fraud” in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential race.
The ruling on Fox News’ motion to dismiss means that Dominion’s litigation can proceed.
Judge Eric Davis wrote in his opinion that Dominion’s lawsuit “alleges facts that Fox made the challenged statements with knowledge of their falsity or with reckless disregard of their truth.”
He added, “The Complaint also alleges facts that there were signs indicating the reports were false. From these, the Court can infer that Fox intended to avoid the truth. Whether Dominion ultimately will prove Fox’s actual malice by clear and convincing evidence is irrelevant on a motion to dismiss. At this stage, it is reasonably conceivable that Dominion has a claim for defamation per se.”
In refusing Fox News’ motion to dismiss, the judge ran through the specific allegations in the Dominion lawsuit, but wrote that “unless otherwise indicated, the following facts are stated as alleged in the Complaint. For purposes of the Motion, the Court must view all well-pled facts alleged in the Complaint as true and in a light most favorable to Dominion.” What it means is that the full conclusions on the merits of the case to come.
Rupert
Record Expunged
Claudette Colvin
Claudette Colvin was 15 in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama — 9 months before Rosa Parks' act of defiance. Colvin was arrested and charged.
Now 82, Colvin filed a petition to have the record of the incident wiped clean, and a judge in Montgomery has granted the request.
Colvin said she was with three classmates and "sitting in the section that was allowed for colored people" when a White woman boarded and moved to the back of the bus, hoping to take a seat. At that time, as Colvin explained, a Black person and a White person could not sit in the same row.
"In segregated law, a colored person couldn't sit across the aisle from a White person," she said. "They had to sit behind the White person to show that they were superior and the colored people was inferior."
"I said I could not move because history had me glued to the seat," she recalled. "And they say, 'How is that?' I say, 'Well, it felt as though Harriet Tubman's hands were pushing me down on one shoulder, and Sojourner Truth hand was pushing me down on the other shoulder.'"
Claudette Colvin
Chief Of Staff
Gosar
The chief of staff for Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Painful) of Arizona tried to catch a plane rumored to be full of fake votes, according to a recent court document.
The episode is one of the most outlandish in the fruitless search by allies of former president Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up) for proof that the 2020 election was stolen.
Gosar's aide, Tom Van Flein, hunted for a plane from South Korea that conspiracy theorists identified as a source of what they thought would be election-changing levels of fraud, per documents cited by The New York Times on Thursday.
The incident with Van Flein was described in a Supreme Court lawsuit filed in March by voter Staci Burk challenging Arizona's election result, which found Joe Biden had won the state.
Hartwig and Van Flein were accompanied by GOP congressional candidate Josh Barrett, activist Marko Triskovitts, and others on the expedition, according to the documents.
Gosar
Illegal Pot Farms
Oregon
Theft of water during a drought. Exploitation of immigrant laborers. Intimidation of residents by armed criminals.
A Democratic state senator from southern Oregon said his region, awash in illegal marijuana farms that are protected by gunmen, is starting to look more like a failed state.
Seven years after Oregon voters passed a ballot measure legalizing the recreational use of marijuana and its regulated cultivation and sale, the state is grappling with an explosion of illegal marijuana farms that have brazenly cropped up, primarily in Josephine and Jackson counties in the south.
Hoop houses — cheaply built greenhouses — have been erected along highways and within city limits, with many growers claiming to be legal hemp farmers but cultivating plants with illegal amounts of THC, the component that creates the “high."
The illicit industry is generating billions of dollars in profits and is financed by well-heeled foreign criminal gangs and drug cartels, law enforcement officials said.
Oregon
Millipede With 1,306 Legs
Eumillipes persephone
Deep underground in an exploratory drill hole in a mining region of Australia, scientists have discovered a "marvel of evolution," a remarkably elongated blind millipede possessing the most legs - 1,306, to be precise - of any known animal.
The threadlike pale-colored millipede reaches about 3-1/2 inches (95 mm) long and about four-hundredths of an inch (0.95 mm) wide, with a conical head, beak-shaped mouth and large antennae - likely one of its only sources of sensory input because it lacks eyes, scientists said on Thursday.
"Previously no known millipede actually had 1,000 legs despite the name millipede meaning 'thousand feet,'" said Virginia Tech entomologist Paul Marek, lead author of the research published in the journal Scientific Reports.
The creature is called Eumillipes persephone. The handful of individuals discovered lived up to almost 200 feet (60 meters) underground. Females had more legs than males.
Until now, the leggiest animal known was a California millipede species called Illacme plenipes, with 750 legs.
Eumillipes persephone
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