from Bruce
Anecdotes
Fathers
• The father of Richard Restak, M.D., helped educate him when Richard was a child. He told young Richard that occasionally he would place a dollar in the front flap of the book cover of the family’s dictionary. He would not do this every day, but he would do it once in a while. He also told Richard that he should open the dictionary and learn a new word every day; after all, Richard would not know on which day his father would put a dollar in the dictionary. Whether Richard earned a dollar or not, he would be rewarded. His father told him, “Every day a new word will be your reward, and on some days you will be doubly rewarded.” Richard kept up the habit of learning a word a day throughout his life and has written books about the brain.
• Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., worked hard to be a good writer, but for a long time influential critics who did not like science fiction regarded him “merely” as a writer of science fiction. Eventually, and especially with the publication of Slaughterhouse-Five, he became famous. Mark, his son, who was named after Mark Twain, was once asked what it was like to grow up with a famous father. He replied, “When I was growing up, my father was a car salesman who couldn’t get a job teaching at Cape Cod Junior College.”
• The father of philosopher George Santayana was a frugal man. When George was a child, he asked his father why he always traveled third class. His father replied, “There is no fourth class.”
Food
• Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, is a wonderful storyteller — not just when he writes his novels, but also when he tells out loud the stories of classic literature. For example, when he and his family were on vacation, Tom, his young son, found it difficult to stay still while they waited for their food in a restaurant. Therefore, Mr. Pullman started telling him the story of Odysseus, hero of Homer’s Odyssey, who spent 10 years at Troy in the Trojan War, and who spent another 10 years returning back home to his home island, Ithaca. Although Odysseus was the King of Ithaca, he returned home without any of his men or ships. Ever cautious, he disguised himself as a beggar, and then he set out to see if he had any friends left on the island. He found that a gang of young men who thought he was dead had had taken over his palace. They wanted to kill his son and to force his wife, Penelope, to choose one of them to marry. Eventually, Mr. Pullman reached the point in the story where Odysseus gets his great bow in his hands and strings the bow. After stringing the bow, he plucks the string on the bow just like a harp player plucks a string on a harp. Immediately, the suitors besieging Penelope feel dread because they know that Odysseus is going to try to kill all of them. At this point, Tom, who was holding a drink in his hands, was so excited that he bit a chunk out of his glass. Their waitress saw him do that, and she was so shocked that she dropped the tray with all their food on the floor. Mr. Pullman ends his story by writing, “And I sent up a silent prayer of thanks to Homer.”
• In December 2009, Alexandra Shulman, the editor of Vogue in England, weighed about 10 pounds more than she wanted to, although this was not anything that she was really concerned about. However, excess weight is something that her father was prone to, and when she was young, he worried that she might become so chunky that she would find it difficult to find a husband. (In 2009 she was divorced and had a child.) When she was attending St Paul’s Girls’ school, the headmistress announced publicly (all of Alexandra’s schoolmates heard the headmistress), “Alexandra Shulman’s mother has said she is not to have potatoes.” When her father was seriously ill and in the intensive ward, she visited him, and he called out to her in a very robust voice, “God, Alexandra, you’ve put on weight.” She immediately thought, “OK, he isn’t going to die yet.”
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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
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Baby Blue"
EP: O-O-O CHILD (… AND OTHER COVID COVERS)
Artist: Wendi Dunlap
Artist Location: Atlanta, Georgia
Info:
“Wendi is a singer / writer / artist / Renaissance woman living in Atlanta, Georgia, and formerly of Seattle, Washington.”
Price: $1 (USD) for track; $3.50 (USD) for four-track EP
Genre: Pop. Covers.
Links:
O-O-O CHILD (… AND OTHER COVID COVERS) Wendi Dunlap on Bandcamp
Wendi Dunlap on YouTube
Wendi Dunlap Official Website
NEW ALBUM: LOOKING FOR BUILDINGS
Futureman Records
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
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David Bruce's Blog #1
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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
Still trying to make arrangements for the trip East and it's not been going well, to phrase it politely.
Pulls Music
Nils Lofgren
Nils Lofgren has joined Neil Young in removing his music from Spotify to protest the misinformation about vaccines spread by the streaming service’s Joe Rogan Experience.
“A few days ago, my wife Amy and I became aware of Neil and Daryl [Hannah] standing with hundreds of health care professionals, scientists, doctors and nurses in calling out Spotify for promoting lies and misinformation that are hurting and killing people,” the Rock Hall-inducted guitarist and Crazy Horse and E Street Band member wrote Saturday on the Neil Young Archives. “When these heroic women and men, who’ve spent their lives healing and saving ours, cry out for help you don’t turn your back on them for money and power. You listen and stand with them.”
The guitarist continued, “As I write this letter, we’ve now gotten the last 27 years of my music taken off Spotify. We are reaching out to the labels that own my earlier music to have it removed as well. We sincerely hope they honor our wishes, as Neil’s labels have done, his.”
Joni Mitchell joined her friend and fellow Canadian in protest Friday night, stating, “I’ve decided to remove all my music from Spotify. Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives. I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.” By Saturday, some of Mitchell’s music began disappearing from her Spotify artist page.
As a member of Crazy Horse, some of Lofgren’s recent music — like Colorado and Barn — was removed during Young’s catalog exodus, but the guitarist tweeted Friday that he also began the process of taking his own music off Spotify soon after Young did.
Nils Lofgren
Plays to Near-Sellout Crowds
‘The Beatles: Get Back’
On Jan. 30, 1969, The Beatles staged their final live performance on the rooftop of their Apple Corps headquarters in London’s Savile Row.
In commemoration of the iconic event, Disney and Imax on Sunday unveiled a special theatrical version of Peter Jackson’s documentary The Beatles: Get Back that played to near-sellout crowds in nearly 70 Imax theaters across North America and at the BFI Imax theater in London.
Sunday’s debut of the 60-minute film — which features the roughly 45-minute concert in its entirety — was accompanied by a live Q&A with Jackson and BBC broadcaster, author and musician Matt Everitt that was beamed into cinemas.
According to Imax, a majority of Sunday’s locations were sold out in cities including New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Charlotte, St. Paul, Pittsburgh, San Antonio and Cleveland. The special even generated roughly $500,000 in grosses.
The Beatles: Get Back — The Rooftop Performance will play exclusively in select Imax locations across the globe over the Feb. 11-13 weekend. The concert footage was digitally remastered with proprietary Imax technology.
‘The Beatles: Get Back’
Saturday Night Live's Five-Timers Club
John Mulaney
John Mulaney is making his way back to Studio 8H! On Saturday, it was announced that the 39-year-old comedian will return to his Saturday Night Live roots as host of the late-night comedy sketch series on Feb. 26.
The upcoming hosting gig will mark Mulaney's fifth time hosting SNL, which will make him an official member of the series' prestigious Five-Timers Club.
The select group includes other famous faces among the likes of Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tom Hanks, Steve Martin, and Scarlett Johansson, to name a few. Paul Rudd is the latest member to join the club after hosting for the fifth time in December.
Mulaney previously served as a writer on SNL for four years from 2008-12. During that time, he would occasionally appear on the show's Weekend Update segment, and he also helped co-create Bill Hader's beloved Stefon character.
The comedian is also the fourth SNL writer to host the show, despite never appearing as an official cast member. Others who have that distinction include Conan O'Brien, Louis C.K., and Larry David.
John Mulaney
Weekend Box Office
“Spider-Man: No Way Home”
On a chillingly quiet weekend at movie theaters, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” again topped the box office in its seventh week of release.
But aside from Paramount Pictures’ “Scream,” which stayed in second place with $7.4 million in its third weekend, January has been a dead zone. No new releases opened widely over the weekend. Last week, one of the only films to try to open nationwide was “The King’s Daughter,” a woebegone fairy tale starring Pierce Brosnan that was made in 2014.
Next week, Lionsgate’s “Moonfall” and Paramount Pictures’ “Jackass Forever” will open and are expected to finally topple “Spider-Man: No Way Home” from the top spot. A large number of blockbusters, including “The Batman,” “Jurassic World: Dominion” and “Top Gun: Maverick,” await in 2022. But some alarmingly thin periods may, too.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” $11 million.
2. “Scream,” $7.4 million.
3. “Sing 2,” $4.8 million.
4. “Redeeming Love,” $1.9 million.
5. “The King’s Man,” $1.8 million.
6. “The 355,” $1.4 million.
7. “American Underdog,” $1.2 million.
8. “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” $770,000.
9. “Licorice Pizza,” $691,000.
10. “West Side Story,” $614,000.
“Spider-Man: No Way Home”
'Do Anything Illegal'
Inciting Incident
Speaking at a Texas rally, the former President Donald Trump called for nationwide protests if prosecutors investigating him and his businesses "do anything illegal."
In the speech, he appeared to link the investigations to his baseless claim that the 2020 election was rigged, which led to the January 6 Capitol riot attempted coup.
"If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had in Washington DC, in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt," Trump the loser told the crowd in Conroe, Texas on Saturday night.
"In reality, they're not after me, they're after you, and I just happen to be the person in the way," Trump the unindicted conspirator told his supporters at the rally.
"For years, they've been going after my company, many years, using every trick in the book in an attempt to literally, if they can, put me in jail. They want to put me in jail," Trump the grifter said at the rally on Saturday.
Inciting Incident
Ottawa Protest
Canada
Thousands of protesters gathered in Canada’s capital on Saturday to protest vaccine mandates, masks and lockdowns.
Some parked on the grounds of the National War Memorial and danced on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, others carried signs and flags with swastikas and some used the statue of Canadian hero Terry Fox to display an anti-vaccine statement, sparking widespread condemnation.
Protestors compared vaccine mandates to fascism, one truck carried a Confederate flag and many carried expletive-laden signs targeting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The statue of Fox, a national hero who lost a leg to bone cancer as a youngster, then set off in 1980 on a fundraising trek across Canada, was draped with a upside down Canadian flag with a sign that said “mandate freedom.”
Canada has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world and the premier of the province of Quebec who is proposing to tax the unvaccinated is popular.
Canada
Lyrics Recited
'The Snake'
The former President Donald Trump once again used 'The Snake" to push anti-immigrant sentiments at a rally in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday.
The crowd erupted in applause after Trump asked if they wanted to hear the song, which he referred to as a poem.
The 1968 soul hit, which was sung by Al Wilson, a Black man, is about a "tender-hearted woman" who saw "a poor half-frozen snake" and took it in.
Trump has recited the song – using the snake as a metaphor for immigrants – at multiple rallies throughout his first bid for president.
In 2016, Wilson's daughter, Alene Wilson-Harris, told Business Insider's Allan Smith that she's not sure her father would "see eye-to-eye" with Trump or his use of the song.
'The Snake'
Turned Down $5,000
Jack Sweeney
A 19-year-old who was offered $5,000 by Elon Musk to shut down a Twitter account tracking the billionaire's jet told Insider he refused the offer because it wasn't enough to replace the satisfaction he gets from running the account.
Protocol was the first to report that Jack Sweeney had been approached by Musk via private messages on Twitter. The DMs, a screenshot of which Sweeney shared with Insider, showed Musk asked him to take down the Elon Musk's Jet Twitter account, saying it was a "security risk."
Musk tweeted earlier this month, saying that social-media accounts discussing his whereabouts were "becoming a security issue."
"How about $5k for this account and generally helping make it harder for crazy people to track me?" Musk asked.
"I've done a lot of work on this and 5k is not enough," Sweeney said in an interview with Insider. He added $5,000 wasn't enough to replace "the fun I have in this, working on it."
Jack Sweeney
Earth's Magnetic Field
Birds
Thanks to a combination of sensing the Earth's magnetic field through vision and an in-built compass that allows them to orient themselves according to magnetic intensity, migratory birds don't have much trouble finding their way.
Those biological gadgets, known as magnetoreception, allow birds to not only know which direction to head in on their first outbound migration but to know how to return to their nesting sites with extreme accuracy, often within meters of their original natal site.
To figure out how birds know when to stop, scientists investigated if birds may also be using cues from Earth's magnetic field to locate their breeding sites more accurately.
The cues could be the magnetic inclination – the dip angle between Earth's magnetic field and Earth's surface – or the magnetic intensity, the overall strength of Earth's magnetic field.
The new study used data from 17,799 ringing recoveries (marked birds) from 1940 to 2018 to investigate if and how the Eurasian reed warbler (Acrocephalus scirpaceus), a trans-Saharan migratory songbird, used magnetic information to return to its nesting site.
Birds
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