from Bruce
Anecdotes
Television
• Ray Romano was happy when his TV sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond premiered. His wife, Anna, was in New York, and Ray was in Los Angeles. Ray decided to celebrate with a friend named Kevin James in Las Vegas, and he telephoned Anna to tell her, “Hey, my show aired last night. You know what? Millions and millions of people saw me on TV.” Ray admits that at the time, “I’m just goofing around with this bravado.” He then added in his conversation with Anna, “OK? So that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing, ’cause I am a TV STAR.” She told him, “You’re still the d**k I married.” Ray laughs and says, “That’s good for me. There’s somebody in my life you get the truth from.” By the way, when the producer of The Late Show with David Letterman telephoned him to express interest in developing a TV sitcom around him — the sitcom that became Everybody Loves Raymond — the producer said, “Just want you to know we’re interested. Don’t sign with anybody else because we’re interested.” Ray replied, “There IS nobody else.”
• The Bob Newhart Show is a much-beloved TV sitcom featuring Mr. Newhart as psychologist Bob Hartley and Suzanne Pleshette as Emily, his wife, a schoolteacher. In the sitcom, Bob and Emily are childless because Mr. Newhart did not want a show where the children use big words and are much more intelligent than their lovable but bumbling father. However, for the 6th season of the show, Mr. Newhart read a script in which Emily announced that she was pregnant. When he was asked what he thought about the script, he replied, “I think it’s a very funny script — who are you going to get to play the part of Bob?”
• Performers in television need to make their marks; that is, they need to stand in certain spots so that the camera operators can properly do their jobs. However, some performers in the days of live television declined to worry about making their marks. For example, comedian Jackie Gleason moved where the spirit moved him. When a camera operator complained, Mr. Gleason told him, “Well, pal, since I’m the star of this show, and your camera has wheels, just who in the h*ll do you think is going to move their *ss?”
• Tommy Smothers, one of the two famous Smothers Brothers, was a genius at overcoming censorship. Back when satirist Pat Paulsen was running for President, network censors were very nervous about what Mr. Paulsen might do and say. As a producer, Tommy made Mr. Paulsen fidget during tapings, thus accomplishing two things: 1) making Paulsen the politician appear shifty, and 2) making editing the tapes impossible because of the technological limitations of the 1960s.
• Groucho Marx could be cynical about such things as politicians and marriage, but when satirist Paul Krassner asked him what gave him hope, Groucho answered, “People.” Of course, Groucho met many people as the host of You Bet Your Life, and his favorite contestant was an elderly gentleman who was happy. Groucho asked what made him happy, and the elderly gentleman replied, “Every morning I get up, and I make a choice to be happy that day.”
• Comedian Martin Short has created many characters, including his favorite, talk-show host Jackie Rogers, Jr., whom he created when he was just a kid. Often, he would perform a variety show with Mr. Rogers as host. The venue was his family’s attic, and the audience was a tape recorder. Mr. Short says, “In my mind, I would see this show airing on NBC-TV at 8:30 on Thursday nights. But it was only every other week because I was far too hip for weekly TV.”
• Larry David, one of the creators of Seinfeld, did not want the show to be one of the sentimental varieties of sitcoms in which everyone hugs at the end after learning a lesson. This is evident in the way in which Seinfeld showed that each of the main characters could at times be shallow and manipulative. In fact, people involved with the show wore jackets that bore this motto: “No Hugging, No Learning.”
• During an appearance on the quiz show You Bet Your Life, a man was completely paralyzed by stage fright and could not speak a word. Groucho Marx said to the audience, “Either this man is dead, or my watch has stopped.”
***
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***
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BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Campos de Satán"
Album: CAMPOS DE SATÁN [Satan’s Fields]
Artist: Thes Siniestros [Sinisters]
Artist Location: Argentina
Info:
“CAMPOS DE SATÁN is the group's second official album. Released in 2010 by Scatter Records, the entire album tells the story of a gaucho’s [South American cowboy’s] descent into hell, his encounter with the Devil and his transformation into a wandering soul. Rock opera at high speed, CAMPOS DE SATÁN marks a new direction for Thes Siniestros, who like a crazy orchestra range from the most primitive rock and roll to baroque pop, early psychedelia and Mexican corridos.”
Price: Buy entire Digital Discography (5 releases, including CAMPOS DE SATÁN for $3.90 (USD)
In addition, there are two FREE releases:
SINGLES (2013)
FORASTERIA (2009)
Genre: Pop.
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Recommended
Ukrainian Female Soldier – No Helmet, No Armor, No Problem
From @noclador's tweet: "Blown up russian equipment, fire, Ukrainian troops after fierce battle,... and in walks a Ukrainian girl with a Kalashnikov, no helmet, no bullet proof vest, sunglasses, who is fighting with the battalion." My two cents: "?? Zoom in, roll it in slow-mo and it’s a hero shot from “Atomic Blonde”. Wow. ????????????????????????" Well, then...Too good to pass up this chance for a proper salute!
Ukrainian troops push out Russian forces at a cost (Associated Press)
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Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
(I saw something somewhere about KBJ;s husband's socks, but this was the first thing I saw that explained why people were talking about his socks.)
WTF is wrong with this country that schools are asking parents to make "comfort kits" for children because schools are now so unsafe and scary?!
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Running extra late.
Voting Difficulties
Willie Nelson
Even country music legend Willie Nelson found it hard to vote absentee in the March 1 primary under new Texas election laws, his wife said.
Nelson and his wife made two attempts before they succeeded in obtaining absentee ballots from Travis County elections officials, wife Annie D’Angelo-Nelson told the Austin American-Statesman.
She said their first applications were rejected because of inconsistent identification information provided on the forms. She said they’re concerned for those wanting absentee ballots but aren’t as tech-savvy as her and her musician-husband.
Roughly 13% of mail ballots returned in the March 1 primary were discarded and uncounted across 187 counties in Texas. Experts said anything above 2% generally draws attention.
Willie Nelson
Shuts Down
Black News Channel
The Black News Channel has pulled the plug after the 2-year-old venture failed to meet payroll and lost the backing of its biggest investor.
Princell Hair, the company’s president and CEO, told employees Friday in a memo that the news network was ceasing live production and would file for bankruptcy. BNC was available in some 50 million homes with cable and satellite but had failed to attract many viewers.
The network, founded in 2020 by former GOP congressman J.C. Watts, hired more than 250 Black journalists and production personnel last year in a relaunch following an investment by Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Kahn.
But it was consistently losing money, despite two rounds of layoffs, and Kahn decided to stop investing in it further. It is currently three weeks short of payroll, a company spokesman said.
Black News Channel
School Board Reverses Jazz Ban
New Orleans
With its president saying it had racist origins, the New Orleans school board has unanimously reversed a little known but century-old ban on jazz in schools in a city which played a huge role in developing jazz and where it is still played nightly at various venues.
“I’m very glad that we can rescind this policy. I want to acknowledge it. It was rooted in racism,” Orleans Parish School Board President Olin Parker said during the meeting Thursday night. “And I also want to acknowledge the tremendous contributions of our students and especially of our band directors, whose legacy continues from 1922 through present day.”
The board’s resolution said it wanted “to correct the previous action of the School Board and to encourage jazz music and jazz dance in schools.”
Ken Ducote, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Collaborative of Charter Schools, brought the policy to the board’s attention after reading about it in Al Kennedy’s book “Chord Changes on the Chalkboard: How Public School Teachers Shaped Jazz and the Music of New Orleans.”
New Orleans
Owner Dismayed
Shark House
The 25-foot tall (7.6 meter) sculpture of a shark crashing through the roof of Magnus Hanson-Heine’s house in rural Oxford, England, is now a protected landmark — and he’s not happy about it.
Hanson-Heine loves the installation, erected by his father and a local sculptor in 1986 as an anti-war, anti-nuke protest that still remains relevant now as bombs fall on Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin rattles his nuclear weapons.
But he says the Oxford City Council ignored his father’s other message this week when it designated the structure a heritage site that makes a “special contribution” to the community. Bill Heine installed the shark without the approval of local officials because he didn’t think they should have the right to decide what art people see, and the council spent years trying to remove the sculpture.
“Using the planning apparatus to preserve a historical symbol of planning law defiance is absurd on the face of it,” Hanson-Heine, a quantum chemist, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Shark House
Collapses In East Antarctica
Glenzer Conger Ice Shelf
An ice shelf the size of New York City has collapsed in East Antarctica, an area long thought to be stable and not hit much by climate change, concerned scientists said Friday.
The collapse, captured by satellite images, marked the first time in human history that the frigid region had an ice shelf collapse. It happened at the beginning of a freakish warm spell last week when temperatures soared more than 70 degrees (40 Celsius) warmer than normal in some spots of East Antarctica. Satellite photos show the area had been shrinking rapidly the last couple of years, and now scientists wonder if they have been overestimating East Antarctica’s stability and resistance to global warming that has been melting ice rapidly on the smaller western side and the vulnerable peninsula.
The ice shelf, about 460 square miles wide (1200 square kilometers) holding in the Conger and Glenzer glaciers from the warmer water, collapsed between March 14 and 16, said ice scientist Catherine Walker of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. She said scientists have never seen this happen in this part of the continent, making it worrisome.
“The Glenzer Conger ice shelf presumably had been there for thousands of years and it’s not ever going to be there again,” said University of Minnesota ice scientist Peter Neff.
Neff said he worries that previous assumptions about East Antarctica’s stability may not be correct. And that’s important because if the water frozen in East Antarctica melted — and that’s a millennia-long process if not longer — it would raise seas across the globe more than 160 feet (50 meters). It’s more than five times the ice in the more vulnerable West Antarctic Ice Sheet, where scientists have concentrated much of their research.
Glenzer Conger Ice Shelf
Moscow-Kaliningrad Train
Vilnius
"Dear passengers of train no. 29, Moscow-Kaliningrad. Today, Putin is killing civilians in Ukraine. Do you support this?" an announcer repeats in Russian at Vilnius station while the service stops there.
Two dozen large pictures from the war in Ukraine, each with the same message, were put up on Friday morning on either side of the platform reserved for the Russian transit trains.
The trains, up to six per day, pause for around 10 minutes in Vilnius, capital of EU-member Lithuania, as they pass to and from Russia's Kaliningrad exclave - sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland - and cities such as Moscow and St Petersburg, via Belarus.
"As far as we know, Russians are shielded from what is happening in Ukraine. Here in Vilnius railway station, we have a possibility to show at least a small piece of what is happening," Mantas Dubauskas, a spokesperson for the state-owned Lithuanian railways, said.
Vilnius
Glaring Conflict of Interest
Slappy
Ginni Thomas waged a QAnon conspiracy-fueled push to get White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to help overturn the results of the 2020 election at the same time her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence "Slappy" Thomas, was ruling on cases pertaining to it. Democrats, legal scholars, and other observers are calling for Thomas to recuse himself from future election-related cases. Republican Reps. Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan, however, aren’t too concerned. Neither is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Speaking at an event in Florida on Friday alongside Jordan, McCarthy dismissed calls for the conservative justice to step aside from such cases, despite his wife’s involvement in the Trump administration’s push to overturn the election. “No … I think Justice Thomas could make his decisions like he’s made them every other time,” McCarthy said. “It’s his decision based upon law. If you spent any time studying this Supreme Court justice, he’s one who studies correctly, I mean, from all the way through. If he sees it’s not upholding the Constitution, he’ll rule against it. If it’s constitutional, that’s what his job should be — it’s him.”
McConnell chimed in later on Friday. “Justice Thomas is a great American and an outstanding Justice,” he said, according to CNN’s Manu Raju. “I have total confidence in his brilliance and impartiality in every aspect of the work of the Court.”
Some congressional Democrats, on the other hand, see no reason for Thomas to stay on the bench for matters relating to Jan. 6. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) was among those calling for his recusal. “Judges are obligated to recuse themselves when their participation in a case would create even the appearance of a conflict of interest. A person with an ounce of commonsense could see that bar is met here,” Wyden said, according to Axios. “In light of new reporting from numerous outlets, Justice Thomas’ conduct on the Supreme Court looks increasingly corrupt.”
Slappy
Large-Scale Study
Artificial Sweeteners
Following years of debate and uncertainty regarding the potential negative health effects of artificial sweeteners, a new large-scale study has revealed that consuming these low-calorie food additives may lead to an increased cancer risk. Appearing in the journal PLOS Medicine, the new research indicates that individuals who ingest higher-than-average quantities of sweeteners are 13 percent more likely to suffer from cancer, although certain types of sugar substitutes are more strongly associated with the disease than others.
In particular, an artificial sweetener called aspartame was associated with a 15 percent increase in risk for all cancers, and a 22 percent increase in risk for breast cancer. Aspartame was also linked to higher rates of obesity-related cancers, while strong associations were found for another sweetener called acesulfame-K.
It’s important to note, however, that this study does not provide any evidence for a causal link between sweeteners and cancer, nor does it elucidate any biological mechanism underlying the apparent association between consumption and morbidity. That said, previous in vitro research has indicated that aspartame may promote DNA damage, exacerbate inflammation and inhibit the body’s ability to destroy deleterious cells, all of which is likely to contribute to the development of cancer.
A separate study found that acesulfame-K elicits even more DNA damage than aspartame, while there is also evidence that many artificial sweeteners interfere with gut microbiota. No firm conclusions can be drawn from any of these studies, although it’s easy to see why some scientists have speculated that sugar substitutes may heighten the risk of cancer.
Artificial Sweeteners
Defies Physics
Solar Wave
Scientists have detected a strange new type of high-frequency wave on the sun's surface, and the waves are moving three times faster than scientists thought was possible.
The acoustic waves, called high-frequency retrograde (HFR) vorticity waves, were spotted rippling backward through the sun's plasma in the opposite direction of its rotation. The previously unknown type of wave was described in a study published March 24 in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Scientists can't see into the sun's fiery depths, so they often measure the acoustic waves that move across its surface and bounce back toward its core to infer what's going on inside. But the unprecedented speed of the HFR waves, spotted in 25 years of data from space and ground-based telescopes, has hinted that scientists might be missing something big.
"The very existence of HFR modes and their origin is a true mystery and may allude to exciting physics at play," co-author Shravan Hanasoge, an astrophysicist at New York University Abu Dhabi's Center for Space Science, said in a statement. "It has the potential to shed insight on the otherwise unobservable interior of the sun."
Scientists initially thought that acoustic solar waves form near the sun's surface thanks to the Coriolis effect, in which points on a rotating sphere's equator seem to move faster than points on its poles.
Solar Wave
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