from Bruce
Anecdotes
Money
• Wilson Mizner once married a rich society lady, which seemed to be a marriage made in Heaven, given Mr. Mizner’s great delight in spending money. However, his wife kept a tight grip on her money, giving her husband very little of it. Mr. Mizner once got on his knees and pleaded for an hour with his wife to prove her love for him by signing a blank check, but she would not. While dining at the Waldorf-Astoria, Mr. Mizner was again pleading for money. This so annoyed his wife that she began beating him with the nearest thing she had in her possession — an envelope filled with money. The envelope came open, the money spilled everywhere, and Mr. Mizner and the other diners in the restaurant began scrambling for it. His wife saw him on his knees, picking up money, and screamed that he could have the money since he was willing to crawl for it. Mr. Mizner said later, “I’d picked up $8,000 before I realized I’d been insulted.”
• When Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Meyer Berger was a boy, his family was poor in money. One day early in the 20th century, he announced to his mother that he had been given the honor of making an acceptance speech because a local organization was donating a new flag to his school. Of course, this was good news, but his mother looked at his shoes and was embarrassed. She told the family that they had only 25 cents, and either she could use the money to buy Meyer a used pair of shoes so he could be decently dressed when he made the acceptance speech, or she could put it in the gas meter and the family could eat a hot supper. The family voted for the shoes, and they ate a cold supper that night. After young Meyer had made his acceptance speech at school, he repeated it at home so his family could hear him.
• Author Donald Ogden Stewart’s son once broke a window. Since Mr. Stewart had to go to work at a movie studio on a Sunday, he tried to use the occasion to make his son feel guilty for breaking the window by saying that Daddy had to go to work to pay for the broken window instead of playing tennis, as he had hoped. Mr. Stewart asked his son, “Aren’t you sorry that poor, dear Daddy has to work on his day off, just because of you?” His son replied, “If you have any money left over, buy me an air rifle.”
• When Eugene Field was a student at Knox College, he sometimes telegraphed his guardian, Melvin L. Gray, for money. If the requested money was slow in arriving, Mr. Field would telegraph Mr. Gray again, saying that unless he received some money quickly, he would be forced to go into show business and bill himself as “Melvin L. Gray, Banjo and Specialty Artist.”
• In 1934, Will Rogers starred in Ah, Wilderness, a play by Eugene O’Neill. However, after he received a letter from a minister telling him that this particular play was unsuitable for being seen by families, Mr. Rogers declined to star in the movie version of the play, thereby losing a salary of over $200,000 — a sum that is over $4 million in year 2021 money.
Mothers
• George Burns loved his mother and regarded her as a wonderful problem-solver. For example, when one of his sisters, Mamie, and her husband, Dr. Max Salis, were having problems and considering getting a divorce, his mother called in her daughter and listened to her side of the story. Then she told her daughter, “Mamie, you’re wrong and the doctor is right. I want you to apologize to Max. Tell him you’re sorry and that it won’t happen again.” After Mamie had left, his mother called in Max and told him, “Doctor, Mamie was right. Don’t ever do that again.”
• Faye Zealand, as part of the AIDS Resource Foundation for Children, has much experience not only with children who have HIV or AIDS, but also with children whose parents have died from AIDS. She knows one little girl who wanted a photograph of her mother, who had died from AIDS. Her foster mother got her a photo, but other people were in it, and the little girl asked for a photo showing only her mother. After she received this photo, the little girl would put it on top of her pillow at night, placing it so that it touched her head — only then would she go to sleep.
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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
Track: "AJ Loves the Beach"
Album: SUMMER FEELINGS, VOLUME 2
Artist: The Meeps!
Artist Location: Cumberland, Maryland, USA
Record Company: RTTB Records
Record Company Location: SH, Germany
Info:
The Meeps!: “Old School Pop Punk.”
“RTTB” means “Ramone To The Bone”
RTTB Records has low-cost or FREE Pop Punk compilations by various artists
Price: Name Your Price (Includes FREE) for 60-track album
“AJ Loves the Beach” is also the Meeps!’ album BAD GIRL. Price: FREE Download for nine-track album.
Genre: Pop Punk.
Links:
SUMMER FEELINGS, VOLUME 2
BAD GIRL
The Meeps! on Bandcamp
AJ Small on YouTube
RTTB Records
Other Links:
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Stephen Suggests
Shades of Fuzzy Zeller
New Venture
Michael Egan
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
Ukraine
Abortion
Other Links:
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Reader Comment
"decison"
I find nothing about this "decison" funny. a vicious crime, imo.
DJ Useo
Thanks, Konrad!
Reader Comment
Perjury
RD
Thanks, RD!
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Slappy
Slappy is already saying the quiet part out loud--other rights he wants to strip from Americans, but he and Ginny are fat, dumb, and silent about Loving v. Virginia.
Your rights? Pfui. But don't utter a word that might affect his freedom or right to decide who to marry! F'ing hypocrite.
Looks like 1950 isn't a big enough step back for the creeps on the current SCOTUS--they want to take is back to the 1600s--which was a great time to be a landed white man--not so great for everyone else.
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Gas was down to $5.99/gal (cash) at the no-name, cash-preferred station (10¢/gal more for credit).
Documentary
Gabby Giffords
In the two years documentary filmmakers shadowed former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, the most jarring moment for them was in the kitchen of her Tucson, Arizona, home.
As cameras were rolling, she and her husband, Sen. Mark Kelly, nonchalantly opened the freezer. Kelly grabbed a plastic container and revealed it holds the piece of Giffords’ skull that had to be removed after she was shot.
“This stays in here next to the empanadas and the sliced mango,” Kelly said.
Giffords’ response was “Será, será,” referencing the song “Que sera, sera” or “What will be, will be.”
The scene from the film is emblematic of Giffords’ openness to reflect on but not languish in the 2011 shooting that changed her life. That desire is what led her to allow cameras into her life for two years — all as a pandemic was progressing.
Gabby Giffords
Filmmaker
Alex Holder
Alex Holder, who gave a deposition to the January 6th Committee on Thursday over the Discovery+ documentary he made about Donald Trump the previous guy, said that he interviewed the president twice after the attack on the Capitol.
“The first time, he did come across as quite irate and quite depressed and frustrated,” he told CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell. “The second time, which was in Bedminster, in New Jersey, he certainly came across as more jovial and content.”
He said that people would have to “wait and see” from the project, but “I just genuinely feel that people might have a different impression about his reaction than I might have.” When O’Donnell asked him what was “staggering” about what Trump the loser said after the Capitol attack, Holder said that it was “that he essentially gave the reason why they were there without fully understanding that he was responsible for that reason.”
Holder said that he is fully cooperating with the committee and had turned over materials. The committee had subpoenaed footage from the project.
Alex Holder
Lost In Translation
Naomi Osaka
Add Naomi Osaka’s new company to the Marketing Blunders Hall of Fame.
The tennis star announced earlier this week that she has partnered with Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James’s SpringHill to start a media company. She expessed the hope that it would produce TV shows, documentaries and branded content.
The name of the new venture, Osaka said, was Hana Kuma, which she claimed means “flower bear” in Japanese.
It didn’t take long for the Japanese-Haitian Osaka to discover it had another meaning in Swahili, where it translates to “Woman without a vagina.” An estimated 200 million people speak Swahili, the majority in East Africa.
Naomi Osaka
Manufacturers Struggle With Demand
Vinyl Records
The arrival of the compact disc nearly killed off record albums, with vinyl pressing machines sold, scrapped and dismantled by major record labels.
Four decades later, with resuscitated record album sales producing double-digit annual growth, manufacturers are rapidly rebuilding an industry to keep pace with sales that reached $1 billion last year.
Dozens of record-pressing factories have been built to try to meet demand in North America — and it’s still not enough.
Demand for vinyl records has been growing in double-digits for more than a decade and mass merchandisers like Target were bolstering their selection of albums just as the pandemic provided a surprising jolt. With music tours canceled, and people stuck at home, music lovers began snapping up record albums at an even faster pace.
Record album sales revenue grew a whopping 61% in 2021 — and reached $1 billion for the first time since the 1980s — far outpacing growth rates for paid music subscriptions and streaming services like Spotify and Pandora, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.
Vinyl Records
Secret Call
Vladi
(The) Former President Donald Trump made a mysterious call to Russian President Vladimir Putin just before the 2020 presidential election, a British filmmaker told Politico.
Alex Holder, who was filming Trump the grifter and his family for a documentary in the months before the Capitol riot, told the outlet that he had been scheduled to film an interview with Trump the unindicted conspirator on October 25, 2020.
That interview was abruptly cancelled on the day, Holder said.
"My memory is that the chief of staff sort of came over and said that the interview couldn't happen today because the president was on the phone," Holder told Politico.
"I believe, if I remember correctly, that he said that he was on the phone to the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, which is why the interview had to be postponed."
Vladi
Target Of Russian Propaganda
Auschwitz Museum
The Auschwitz-Birkenau museum alleged Friday that it was the target of “primitive" propaganda spread by Russian state agencies on social media.
The museum said that social media posts falsely claim to show anti-Russian stickers placed around the memorial at the former site of the Auschwitz death camp site in southern Poland, an area under German occupation during World War II.
“Russia and Russians,” the stickers appearing in fake images say, "the only gas you and your country deserve is Zykon B.” That is a reference to the gas the Germans used in the mass murder of Jews and others at the camp, which operated during 1940-1945.
The images were tweeted by official Russian sites, including the Russian Arms Control Delegation in Vienna and retweeted by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They appeared intended to portray Russians as targets of vicious Russophobia. Some posts claimed the stickers were the work of Ukrainians.
The Auschwitz Museum said no such stickers were found at the places depicted in the images, and that security cameras did not capture anyone affixing anything to the locations on or before June 22.
Auschwitz Museum
World's Deepest Shipwreck Discovered
USS Samuel B Roberts
Explorers have found the deepest shipwreck ever identified, a US navy destroyer escort sunk during WWII.
The USS Samuel B Roberts went down during the Battle Off Samar in the Philippine Sea in October 1944. It lies in 6,895m (22,621ft) of water.
Texan financier and adventurer Victor Vescovo, who owns a deep-diving submersible, discovered the "Sammy B" battered but largely intact.
The vessel is famed for a heroic final stand against the Japanese.
Of the Samuel B Roberts' 224-man crew, 89 were killed. The 120 survivors clung to life rafts for 50 hours awaiting rescue.
USS Samuel B Roberts
Latest Discovery
Pompeii
The remains of a tortoise and its egg have been unearthed by archaeologists in Pompeii, the Roman city buried in a volcanic eruption in 79 AD.
The animal was found hidden under the clay floor of a storehouse and probably died before Vesuvius erupted.
"It had dug itself a burrow where it could lay its egg, but failed to do, which may have caused its death," said Valeria Amoretti, who works as an anthropologist at the site.
The unusual find came to light during excavations of an area that had been devastated by a violent earthquake in 62 AD and was subsequently absorbed into a public bath house.
The site was originally an opulent home with refined mosaics and wall paintings, dating back to the 1st century BC, and archaeologists are not sure why the building was not restored but was rather taken over by the Stabian baths.
Pompeii
Lost Fossil 'Treasure Trove' Rediscovered
Cerro Chato
Scientists have finally rediscovered a lost fossil site in Brazil, after the researchers who originally discovered it 70 years ago were unable to retrace their steps to the remote location. The unique geologic conditions at the long-lost site preserve paleontological treasures that could help shed light on one of the biggest extinction events in Earth's history.
The rediscovered site, which is known as Cerro Chato, is located near Brazil's border with Uruguay in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. Around 260 million years ago, towards the end of the Permian period (299 million to 251 million years ago) conditions at the site were ideal for trapping and preserving dead organisms. As a result, multiple rocky layers at Cerro Chato are chock-full of delicate fossils — especially plants, which typically do not fossilize as well as animals do because they lack hard parts.
Paleontologists who first discovered Cerro Chato in 1951 were excited by its exceptionally well-preserved Permian remains. Unfortunately, without memorable landmarks or modern technologies, such as GPS, the researchers were unable to accurately record the exact geographical coordinates of the site, and when they attempted to return to the Permian treasure trove they could not find it. After several attempts to retrace their steps, the team gave up the search and declared the site lost. However, a new group of researchers took up the mantle and successfully found the lost location in 2019.
To date, more than 100 fossils — mostly plants, along with some fish and molluscs — have been uncovered at Cerro Chato by the original team and by the co-authors of the new study. Some of the fossilized plants are ancestors of modern-day conifers and ferns, the researchers reported.
However, the new team suspects that these fossils are just the tip of the iceberg. When the original researchers discovered the site, they were only able to scratch the surface of Cerro Chato’s fossil deposits before they lost track of its location, and though it was rediscovered almost three years ago, there's still a lot of ground to cover. "The area to be explored is huge," lead study author Joseane Salau Ferraz, a doctoral candidate at the Federal University of Pampa in Rio Grande do Sul, said in the statement. "I estimate that we haven't explored even 30% of all available space."
Cerro Chato
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