from Bruce
Anecdotes
Gifts
• In 1944, Laurence Olivier scored a major success while acting in Richard III. John Gielgud welcomed Mr. Olivier into the ranks of the truly great actors by giving him a special gift: the sword that Edmund Kean had used while playing the role of Richard III in the early 1800s. This sword has been passed down from Mr. Kean to Mr. Henry Irving to Mr. Gielgud to Mr. Olivier — truly great actors all.
Good Deeds
• At the very beginning of her career, opera singer/actress Grace Moore started touring with a play titled Town Gossip that never reached Broadway. Unfortunately, when it closed in Boston no money was left to pay the chorus girls, so they were stranded without a way to get back to New York City. Fortunately, Ms. Moore was able to telephone her friend Bernard Baruch — she was the type of person who knows many, many famous people — and he paid the chorus girls’ way back home. The chorus girls were grateful to him and they paid him back, but slowly — for years afterwards, small checks were sent to Mr. Baruch through Actors’ Equity.
• When Carol Burnett was majoring in theater arts at UCLA, she and a fellow student entertained at a party, where she sang songs from the Broadway hit Annie Get Your Gun. A man at the party was impressed by what he had heard, and he promised to give them the money to get to Broadway. A few days later, they stopped by the man’s office, where he handed them each a check for $1,000 and said, “Use it to get started. I came to this country without a cent. Now I want to show my thanks to America by helping others. Pay me back in five years, if you make it, and someday do the same for someone else.”
Housing
• One of Jeremy Nichols’ friends had a rather nasty experience with the interior decor of a room that was rented to itinerant actors in England. He saw a fur-covered lampshade in his room. Thinking that his landlady had horrible taste, and wondering whether the fur was real, he touched it — only to discover that what looked like fur was a coating of dust, one-half inch thick.
• British actress Hermione Gingold loved the English countryside. How much did she love it? After growing homesick for the English countryside while living in New York, she altered her Park Avenue penthouse — by giving it a thatched roof.
Husbands and Wives
• At one point, Lorraine Hansberry’s writing of a play seemed to be going nowhere, so she threw the pages into the air, then left the room to get a broom to sweep the pages into the fire. When she returned, she found her husband gathering the pages together and putting them in order. A few days later, he set the pages before her, and she resumed writing the play. In 1959, the New York Drama Critics Circle named the play, A Raisin in the Sun, the Best Play of the Year.
• Brian Smedley fell in love with actress Judi Dench and asked her to marry him. She said that she would think about the proposal, then give him her answer, but she never got back to him. Instead, she fell in love with Michael Williams and married him. While visibly pregnant, she was performing in London Assurance. Mr. Smedley saw the play, and when it was over, he went to her dressing room, stuck his head in the door, and said, “I take it the answer’s no?”
• Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari wrote the comic opera Il Segreto di Susanna in 1909. The plot revolves around Susanna’s secret, which threatens to tear apart her marriage. Her husband knows that she has a secret, and he suspects the worst, but she insists that she is innocent, and she insists on her privacy. Finally, the audience learns her secret — she smokes cigarettes!
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Backyard"
Album: AQUABEAR LEGION VOLUME 6
Artist: Leggy
Artist Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
Record Company: Aquabear Legion
Record Company Location: Ohio
Info: “Aquabear Legion brings you the best independent music in Ohio.”
Dan Dusa YouTube comment: “One part Ramones, one part Sleater Kinney with a mix of pop and punk influences. Leggy’s ‘bubblegum punk’ is pretty cool! Lyrics and music available on Bandcamp.”
“Leggy is a feminist trio who speak openly about consent, self-worth, sexuality and female.”
Formed in 2013, Leggy is Veronique Allaer (guitar / vocals), Kirsten Bladh (bass / vocals) and Chris Campbell (drums).
Price: Name Your Price (Includes FREE) for 23-track album by various artists
Genre: Rock. Pop.
Links:
AQUABEAR LEGION VOLUME 6
Aquabear Legion
Leggy on Bandcamp
Leggy on YouTube
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
Whoopee Ti-Yi-Yo
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
Wonder if we'll be able to hear the Grand Prix this year?
Bezos’ Passenger
William Shatner
William Shatner looks set to head into space via Jeff Bezos’ civilian flight rocket, according to reports.
The Star Trek actor is expected to head into space on an upcoming flight in October, via the Blue Origin New Shepard rocket (via TMZ).
At 90 years old, it would make Shatner “the oldest person ever to be launched into space,” according to the publication.
Shatner has expressed his desire to go into space before. Last year, he shared a photoshopped image of himself in a spacesuit and tweeted it to NASA.
While Shatner hasn’t yet confirmed the reports, TMZ writes that the 15-minute flight could be filmed for a documentary.
William Shatner
Sues To Block Heirs
Marvel
Marvel filed five lawsuits on Friday seeking to block the heirs of comic book creators from reclaiming copyrights to many of its most popular characters, including Spider-Man, Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow, Captain Marvel, Ant-Man and Doctor Strange.
The move comes after heirs of five Marvel authors filed dozens of termination notices with the U.S. Copyright Office. If the notices were to succeed, they would not prevent Marvel from using the disputed characters, which were created by multiple collaborators. But they would require the studio to make payments to the heirs.
The termination notices were filed by Marc Toberoff, a veteran copyright attorney who fought similar battles on behalf of the heirs of Jack Kirby, a co-creator of several Marvel heroes, and of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the co-creators of Superman. Toberoff argues that the Marvel authors’ work led to multi-billion dollar franchises, and that their heirs should be allowed to share in the wealth.
Toberoff represents Larry Lieber, the brother of Stan Lee and a co-creator of Thor, Iron Man, and Ant Man; as well as the estates of Steve Ditko (Spiderman, Dr. Strange), Don Heck (Iron Man, Black Widow, Hawkeye), Don Rico (Black Widow), and Gene Colan (Captain Marvel, Falcon, Blade).
In the lawsuits, Marvel argues that the characters were created under “work for hire” arrangements, and that the heirs have no valid claim to the copyrights.
Marvel
Sequel Ordered
‘Night Court’
NBC has ordered a sequel to its classic comedy “Night Court” starring Melissa Rauch and John Larroquette, who is reprising his role from the original, to series, TheWrap has learned.
Here’s the official logline for the new half-hour, multi-cam show “Night Court,” which has been in the works at NBC since December 2020 and is based on the original “Night Court” series created by Reinhold Weege: Unapologetically optimistic judge Abby Stone (Melissa Rauch), the daughter of the late Harry Stone, follows in her father’s footsteps as she presides over the night shift of a Manhattan arraignment court and tries to bring order to its crew of oddballs and cynics, most notably former night court prosecutor Dan Fielding (John Larroquette).
The “Night Court” pilot, which was ordered in May 2021 by NBC, is written by Dan Rubin and directed by Pamela Fryman. Executive producers on the series include Rubin, Fryman, and Melissa Rauch and her husband, Winston Rauch, for After January Productions. Larroquette is a producer.
The original “Night Court,” created by Reinhold Weege, aired for nine seasons on NBC from 1984-1992. Set during the night shift at a Manhattan municipal court, the series centered on Harry Anderson’s young, unorthodox judge Harry Stone. Anderson and Larroquette starred alongside Gail Strickland, Paula Kelly, Ellen Foley, Markie Post, Richard Moll, Selma Diamond, Florence Halop, Marsha Warfield, Karen Austin and Charles Robinson.
Larroquette won the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor four years in a row for his role as Fielding from 1984-1988. “Night Court” won seven Emmys overall throughout its run.
‘Night Court’
Whines About Rupert
Rudy
Rudy Giuliani (R-Melting) was reportedly “really hurt” that Fox News banned him from appearing on the network. He turned to Steve Bannon to elaborate on Friday, telling the former White House adviser that the ban is “outrageous.”
During the taping of his War Room podcast on Friday, Bannon asked Giuliani how the network could put him on “double-secret probation, particularly over 9/11” and also ban Giuliani’s son Andrew, who is running for governor of New York. “How does that work?” asked Bannon, who’s having a banner week of his own.
The news of Giuliani’s ban, which will last at least three months, was reported Friday morning by Politico. The story noted that Andrew Giuliani was also banned, which a Fox News spokesperson denied to Rolling Stone.
The story also claimed that Giuliani was scheduled to appear on Fox & Friends on the morning of 9/11, and that host Pete Hegseth called Giuliani the night before to inform him that he’d been cut from the show. Fox News denied this, as well, claiming that Giuliani was not scheduled to appear on Fox & Friends the morning of 9/11. Fox News did not, however, deny that Giuliani had been banned. They merely declined to comment.
The ban is the latest embarrassment in a reputational nosedive for the former mayor of New York. Earlier this week, he was offering promotional codes for discounted pillows on his Twitter account.
Rudy
Statistics
US
New moms are dying at alarming rates in the US, but the hidden crisis is that many of these deaths are suicides
It's well documented and widely reported that pregnant and postpartum people in the US die at abysmally high rates because of largely preventable medical complications like hemorrhages and because of deep-seated cultural issues like systemic racism.
But they're also dying by suicide - and getting lost in statistics that don't consider self-harm in counts of new mothers' deaths. Advocates and maternal-mental-health professionals say new moms are silently suffering in the first year of parenthood, with each obstetrician or pediatrician appointment a missed opportunity for them to be saved.
"Why do we wait the way we wait now, until a mom has sort of fallen off the cliff of depression and then say, 'Climb out yourself, best of luck to you?'" Adrienne Griffen, the executive director of the Maternal Mental Health Leadership Alliance, told Insider. "We ought to be surrounding moms with support."
The US has the highest maternal-mortality rate of any developed country. And that rate is climbing, with women of color severely disproportionately affected.
US
Tree Dispute
San Francisco
Tall trees are venerated across California, but one towering Monterey Pine at the center of a heated dispute in San Francisco’s wealthiest neighborhood has to go, according to an appeals court ruling this week.
A state appeals court on Wednesday ordered a couple in the hilltop Pacific Heights neighborhood to remove the tree, which is at least 32 feet (10 meters) tall. A neighbor argued the tree was blocking her view of the San Francisco Bay and other city landmarks, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The neighbor is an 81-year-old woman who had moved into the San Francisco home with her now-deceased husband in 1976. When the couple “saw the magnificent views, they were sold,” said Barri Bonapart, the woman’s lawyer.
“You could see all the way from Marin Headlands, out to the Pacific Ocean, and then the Golden Gate Bridge, Palace of Fine Arts, Sausalito, Belvedere, Tiburon and Angel Island,” Bonaparte said. She said her client asked to withhold her name because she was afraid of being harassed.
The pine was planted by a prior resident in 1999 and, by the time the case went to trial in 2019, had grown dozens of feet tall with widening, thickly growing branches. The lawsuit was filed in 2018 after mediation failed.
San Francisco
Hidden Changes
Earth's Crust
As the polar ice sheets melt, the process is not just raising sea levels – it's also warping the underlying surface of Earth, a new study reveals, and some of the effects can be seen across thousands of miles.
What's happening is that Earth's crust is rising and spreading as the weight of the ice across Greenland, Antarctica, and the Arctic Islands gets lifted. The movement isn't huge, averaging less than a millimeter a year, but it's there and it covers a lot of ground.
There's a feedback loop happening too, because as the bedrock under the ice shifts, that in turn affects how the ice continues to melt and break away. A full understanding of how this works is essential in modeling how our world might look in the future.
Several previous studies have documented the uplift that can happen as ice sheets melt, but Coulson and her colleagues looked more closely at horizontal shifts, and across a wider area. They found that the deformations can vary significantly from year to year.
In some areas, the horizontal movement actually exceeds the vertical movement, the researchers found. They used satellite data and field measurements covering the years 2003 to 2018 to measure crust movement in three dimensions.
Earth's Crust
Recovers 16th Century Manuscripts
Mexico
Mexico's foreign ministry said on Thursday it had recovered valuable manuscripts from the 16th century, including some relating to conquistador Hernan Cortes, months after a group of academics reported them missing from Mexico's national archives.
In apparently systematic fashion, 10 documents were stolen over several years from a collection dedicated to Cortes and later put up for sale in international auction houses including Swann, Bonhams and Christie's, the academic investigators said.
Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said on Twitter that the documents had been recovered by U.S. investigators and the office of the attorney general of New York.
Among the recovered manuscripts is a document from 1521 that reveals political intrigue involving Cortes, who led the Spanish army that with its local allies overthrew the Aztec Empire.
The investigating team found the manuscripts by matching images posted on the internet by auction houses with images from the investigation at the National Archives of Mexico.
Mexico
Views of a Galaxy 9.4 Billion Light-Years Away
'Einstein Ring'
One of the most spectacular Einstein rings ever seen in space is enabling us to see what's happening in a galaxy almost at the dawn of time.
The smears of light called the Molten Ring, stretched out and warped by gravitational fields, are magnifications and duplications of a galaxy whose light has traveled a whopping 9.4 billion light-years. This magnification has given us a rare insight into the stellar 'baby boom' when the Universe was still in its infancy.
The early evolution of the Universe is a difficult time to understand. It blinked into existence as we understand it roughly 13.8 billion years ago, with the first light emerging (we think) around 1 billion years later. Light traveling for that amount of time is faint, the sources of it small, and dust obscures much of it.
Even the most intrinsically luminous objects are extraordinarily hard to see across that gulf of space-time, so there are large gaps in our understanding of how the Universe assembled itself from primordial soup.
The Molten Ring (formally named GAL-CLUS-022058s) is just such an Einstein ring, magnified by the gravitational field around a huge cluster of galaxies in the constellation of Fornax. So powerful is this effect that not only does the distant galaxy appear in four distorted images, it's magnified by a factor of 20.
'Einstein Ring'
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