from Bruce
Anecdotes
Shakesspeare
• Lesbian comedian Sara Cytron was a class clown. To get her to be quiet during class, her English teacher used to give her five minutes at the beginning of class to recite any Shakespeare monologue in any accent she chose. Her favorite was a monologue featuring Lady Macbeth speaking with a Brooklyn accent.
• Vaudeville comedian Bobby Clark did not believe in the classics. For example, he thought that Lady Macbeth’s sleep-walking scene could be considerably enlivened if the director would put a carnival air blower under her skirts so that they would rise up as do Marilyn Monroe’s in the movie The Seven Year Itch.
• The 19th-century actor Edwin Booth once gave a performance of King Lear in a mosquito-infested theater. On stage as King Lear, he asked the character Edgar, “What is your study?” Edgar replied, “How to prevent the fiend, and to kill vermin.” Mr. Booth then interpolated, “Skeeters an’ sich?”
• While in high school, African-American actor/singer Paul Robeson played Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. The play was much talked about by the students — because the student playing Caesar used lots of ketchup to represent blood in the assassination scene.
• Barbara Feldon, the beautiful Agent 99 on the 1960s TV series Get Smart, is very intelligent. After graduating from Carnegie Tech Drama School, she appeared on the quiz show The $64,000 Question, where she won the top prize by answering a question about King Lear.
• Diana Rigg once played Cordelia to Paul Scofield’s King Lear. After she recited, “Had you not been their father, these white flakes did challenge pity of them,” Mr. Scofield murmured, “Are you suggesting I’ve got dandruff?”
Stages
• Comedian Joey Adams was once part of a troupe that was presenting Tobacco Road at a hotel in the Catskills. For hours, the troupe worked on the stage, getting it just right and carrying in mounds of dirt, small trees, vines and bushes, and everything else it took to make a completely naturalistic stage setting. Finally, everything was perfect, and the troupe went off to relax before the show. When they returned to the stage, every tree, every bush, every vine, and every lump of dirt was gone. The owner of the hotel had walked in, seen the stage setting, figured that one of his rivals was trying to sabotage the new show, and ordered everything cleaned up.
• Dancing can be strenuous. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, dance critic Walter Terry practiced dance with Marion Tatum, who frequently tore the soles of her feet practicing fouettés. Twenty years after leaving UNC, Mr. Terry returned to the stage where he and Ms. Tatum used to practice — and her bloodstains were still on the floor.
Telegrams
• Eddie Cantor says that Fanny Brice loved to play cards, but that she took an extraordinarily long time to decide which card to discard. Anyone who played cards with her had to wait and wait and wait for her turn to end. (Occasionally, they would break the monotony of waiting by saying to Ms. Brice, “Well?”) One day Mr. Cantor was playing cards with her when he excused himself, left her hotel, went to the train station, took one train to Chicago, then another train to New York City. In New York City, he sent her a telegram: “WELL?”
• After The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended, Ms. Moore performed on Broadway in Whose Life is It, Anyway? Although Ms. Moore had trained as a dancer, her role was that of a quadriplegic, meaning that she had to hold her body still and act with only her face and voice. Ed Asner (who played the character Lou Grant in The Mary Tyler Moore Show) sent her this telegram: “NICE TO KNOW ALL THOSE DANCING LESSONS HAVE PAID OFF AT LAST.”
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Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Suburban Reverbs"
Album: EN LATA [IN CAN]
Artist: Los A-Tunes
Artist Location: Zaragoza, Spain
Info: 100% Do-It-Yourself
“First demo recorded by Akademiko Lafu and edited by Grabaciones Morediscos on a Sunday, July 15, 2018, outside somewhere in the outskirts of Zaragoza with a lot of heat and after a first recording made on June 10 and that we had previously posted on YouTube.”
Surf Rock instrumental music band from the city of Zaragoza. More info and contact at: losatunes.com/and contacto@losatunes.com
Price: Name Your Price (Includes FREE) for four-track EP
Genre: Surf Instrumental.
Links:
EN LATA
Los A-Tunes on Bandcamp
Los A-Tunes on YouTube
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
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Reader Suggestion
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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
Gas holding steady at $4.05/gal at the no-name, cash-preferred gas station.
Celebrates 50th Birthday By Going Platinum
‘Imagine’
As John and Yoko Ono Lennon’s paean for peace, “Imagine,” continues to celebrate its 50th anniversary, the iconic song has just been certified triple platinum by the RIAA for selling 3 million units in the U.S.
The achievement comes on the eve of what would have been John’s 81st birthday this Saturday, October 9.
In honor of Imagine’s golden anniversary and John Lennon’s birthday, Yoko Ono Lennon and the John Lennon Estate are celebrating the legendary songwriter, musician, and peace activist with a variety of events and releases throughout the weekend.
‘Imagine’
Breaks World Record
Tony Bennett
Legendary singer Tony Bennett has broken another Guinness World Record at the age of 95.
Bennett is now the oldest person to release an album of new material at the age of 95 and 60 days.
Bennett broke the record with the Oct. 1 release of LOVE FOR SALE, his new album with Lady Gaga, which celebrates the music of Cole Porter.
Bennett has won 19 Grammy awards, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, over the span of his 70-decade career.
Tony Bennett
Spinoff Ordered
“That ’90s Show”
Netflix has ordered “That ’90s Show,” a spinoff of the hit Fox sitcom “That ’70s Show,” Variety has learned.
Kurtwood Smith and Debra Jo Rupp, who played parents Red and Kitty Forman in the original series, are set to return in “That ’90s Show.” Netflix has ordered 10 episodes of the show, which will be a multi-cam sitcom like the original.
In the new series, it’s 1995 and Leia Forman, daughter of Eric and Donna, is visiting her grandparents for the summer where she bonds with a new generation of Point Place, WI, kids under the watchful eye of Kitty and the stern glare of Red.
Original series creators Bonnie Turner and Terry Turner and their daughter Lindsey Turner are onboard as writers and executive producers, with “That 70’s Show” alum Gregg Mettler also writing in addition to serving as executive producer and showrunner. Smith and Rupp will executive produce in addition to starring. Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner of The Carsey-Werner Company, who executive produced the original show, will also executive produce the followup.
“That ’90s Show”
9090-Piece Titanic
LEGO
It’s been over 100 years since the RMS Titanic sunk in the North Atlantic, killing 1,500 people in one of the greatest civilian maritime disasters in human history. Which is enough time to have passed, LEGO figures, to release a great big toy based on the ship.
The LEGO Titanic, due for release in November, is making the most of its subject matter: The actual ship was, at the time, the largest ever built, and so too is this (according to LEGO) the “largest official LEGO set ever created.” It comes in at 9090 pieces, and measures an enormous 54" (135cm) long.
(Whether you want to argue that point is up to you, since the World Map set includes over 11,000 pieces)
While the outside of the ship is incredibly detailed—featuring little touches like a working anchor and tension lines—it’s also designed to be taken apart. Not to recreate the breaking up of the ship as it sank beneath the waves, no—that would be a bit much. Instead the point here is that you can slide the ship apart to reveal the insides.
If you think it looks complicated, you’re not wrong, the build is recommended for those 18 and over. It’s due out on November 1, and if you’re still wondering how much it’s going to cost, you are obviously new to this whole “LEGO in 2021" thing, so please sit down before reading that the RRP is USD$630.
LEGO
First President To Mark
Indigenous Peoples’ Day
President Joe Biden on Friday issued the first-ever presidential proclamation of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, lending the most significant boost yet to efforts to refocus the federal holiday celebrating Christopher Columbus toward an appreciation of Native peoples.
The day will be observed Oct. 11, along with Columbus Day, which is established by Congress. While Native Americans have campaigned for years for local and national days in recognition of the country’s indigenous peoples, Biden’s announcement appeared to catch many by surprise.
“This was completely unexpected. Even though we’ve been talking about it and wanting it for so long,” said Hillary Kempenich, an artist and member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. In 2019, she and other tribal members successfully campaigned for her town of Grand Forks, N.D., to replace Columbus Day with a day recognizing Native peoples.
In a separate proclamation on Columbus Day, Biden praised the role of Italian Americans in U.S. society, but also referenced the violence and harm Columbus and other explorers of the age brought about on the Americas.
Indigenous Peoples’ Day
Burned
Giant Sequoias
Hundreds of giant sequoias may have been killed after high-intensity flames from the KNP Complex fire tore through several groves of the massive trees in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.
Since igniting Sept. 9, the lightning-sparked blaze has encroached on 15 groves of the colossal trees, with two that appear to have been at least partially subjected to high-severity fire, said Christy Brigham, chief of resources management and science for the parks.
The extent of the damage to those groves — Redwood Mountain and Castle Creek — won't be known until officials can survey the area, either from the air or the ground, she said.
An enormous pyrocumulus formed Monday near the Redwood Mountain Grove, indicating the likelihood of extreme fire behavior.
Park officials on Wednesday wrote on Facebook that they suspect some groves were hit by flames severe enough "to result in sequoia mortality, possibly for significant numbers of trees (hundreds)."
Giant Sequoias
Happened 30 Million Years Ago
'Huge Extinction Event'
The close of the Eocene roughly 33 million years ago marks a time of great change on Earth. In a slow reversal of what we're seeing today, temperatures dropped and glaciers stretched their icy fingers towards the equator.
The loss of life across the Asian continent was profound. But Africa's biodiversity, sheltered by the warmth of the tropics, appeared to go unscathed by the colossal changes. Or so we thought.
According to a recently published study by a team of researchers from across the US, we just weren't looking at the fossil record the right way.
The research suggests that far from thriving through this cold change, mammals on the Arabian Peninsula and across the African continent experienced significant declines, with nearly two thirds of their peak diversity disappearing 30 million years ago.
Exactly what precipitated each loss isn't clear, though with widespread temperature fluctuations and intense volcanic activity rocking the region, there's no shortage of possibilities.
'Huge Extinction Event'
Mysterious Mangrove Forest
Mexico
Scientists have uncovered the origin of a mysterious landlocked mangrove forest in the heart of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.
Normally, trees of this species — known as red mangroves, or Rhizophora mangle — grow only in salt water, along tropical coastlines. But this forest is located near the San Pedro River in the state of Tabasco, more than 125 miles (200 kilometers) from the nearest ocean. Somehow, these mangroves have adapted to live exclusively in this freshwater environment in southeast Mexico.
Exactly how this ecological enigma came about has baffled scientists. But now, an international, multidisciplinary team of researchers has revealed that this out-of-place ecosystem began growing around 125,000 years ago, when sea levels were much higher and the ocean covered most of the region.
"The most amazing part of this study is that we were able to examine a mangrove ecosystem that has been trapped in time for more than 100,000 years," lead author Octavio Aburto-Oropeza, a marine ecologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, said in a statement. It was like putting together a "lost world," he added.
Researchers began studying the San Pedro mangrove system only recently, but local people have enjoyed the unique ecosystem for generations.
Mexico
Auction
Al Capone
It was Christmas Day in 1946 when notorious Chicago gangster Al Capone took his wife and four granddaughters out for a walk onto the dock of their sprawling mansion on Palm Island, Florida.
A picture shows "papa", as he was known to them, relishing his freedom after being released from Alcatraz where he served over seven years for tax evasion.
That picture is among 174 items belonging to the Capone family that will go up for auction in Sacramento, California, on Friday.
Al Capone’s platinum and diamond Patek Philippe pocket watch is listed for $25,000 to $50,000, while his favorite Colt .45 pistol is estimated to fetch $100,000 to $150,000. A vintage hand-colored silver print of Al and his son, Sonny Capone, is expected to go for $10,000 to $15,000.
Diane Capone, 77, the second of Al Capone’s four granddaughters, said the decision to sell the items was based on her and her sisters getting older, as well as the increasing threat of wildfires to their homes in Northern California.
Al Capone
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