from Bruce
Anecdotes
Husbands and Wives
• When producer David Merrick’s second wife divorced him, she wanted to get a laugh at his expense. She succeeded admirably by taking out this advertisement in The New York Times: “NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DEBTS OTHER THAN MY OWN. [SIGNED] MRS. DAVID MERRICK.”
Insults
• Near the end of his life, celebrated homosexual wit Quentin Crisp used to give theatrical presentations of An Evening with Quentin Crisp. In the first half of the program, he would speak; in the second half, he would answer questions from the audience. A woman once asked him if he believed in reincarnation. Mr. Crisp replied that he did not, and after finding out that the woman did, he asked what she wanted to be reincarnated as. On hearing the answer — she wanted to be reincarnated as herself — he asked, “Lady, have you no ambition?”
• While playing the male lead role in Romeo and Juliet in Philadelphia, Charlotte Cushman was insulted when a man in the audience deliberately sneezed in a successful attempt to draw attention from the stage. Ms. Cushman stopped acting, led the actress playing Juliet to the side of the stage, then said, “Some man must put that person out, or I shall do it myself.” Ms. Cushman’s actions were cheered, and the man was escorted out by several other men.
• George S. Kaufman and the overweight Alexander Woollcott once wrote a play titled The Dark Tower together. During rehearsal, an actor who had to wear padding because of his role, said, “I certainly hate to walk out on the stage with a big paunch.” Mr. Kaufman replied, “You have grossly insulted Alexander Woollcott.” This pleased Mr. Woollcott, until Mr. Kaufman added, “And for that, you will receive a gold medal.”
• George Bernard Shaw sent two tickets to the opening night of one of his plays to Sir Winston Churchill, with a note saying, “Please come to my play and bring a friend, if you have one.” Sir Winston replied with his own note, saying that he couldn’t come to the opening night, but “I’ll come to the second night, if you have one.”
• After playing Sir Harry Wildair on stage to the audience’s delight, actress Peg Woffington told leading man James Quin that she thought that half the audience believed her to be a man. Well knowing of Ms. Woffington’s reputation for romantic affairs, Mr. Quin replied, “And the other half knows you are a woman.”
• George Bernard Shaw once listened to a very poor violinist. When his hostess asked for his opinion of the violinist’s talent, Mr. Shaw said that the violinist reminded him of Ignace Paderewski. The hostess said, “Paderewski? But he’s not a violinist!” Mr. Shaw replied, “Exactly.”
• John Wilkes was once bored by a conceited young man who told him, “I was born between twelve and one on the first of January. Isn’t it strange?” Mr. Wilkes replied, “Not in the slightest. You could only have been conceived on the first of April.”
• A photographer once snapped a shot of Noël Coward, then asked, “Could you please tell me your name?” Mr. Coward replied, “I recommend you to Who’s Who — and h*ll.”
Language
• In 1913, the widow of Ernest Fenollosa gave Ezra Pound her husband’s translations of Japanese Noh plays so that he could make poetic translations of them. Mr. Pound was willing, but he requested help in understanding Noh from Japanese choreographer/dancer Michio Ito, who told him, “Noh is the d*mnedest thing in this world.” Mr. Pound replied, “I am only an American. You say Noh is the d*mnedest thing in this world — which means you know more about it than I do. That is why you have to help me.” Mr. Ito did help, Mr. Pound did make some poetic translations, and his translations inspired William Butler Yeats to write some plays in the Noh style.
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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: "These Boots are Made for Walking" (Instrumental)
Album: THE LOST SESSIONS
Artist: The Vulcanos
Artist Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Info:
Fioro: lead guitar, rhythm guitar on “The Answer” [“La respuesta”], additional effects on “Adventures in Paradise.”
Vulcano D: rhythm guitar, lead guitar in “The Answer” [“La respuesta”]
Paul Vulcano: bass.
Juan Solo: drums.
Price: $1 (USD) for track; $5 (USD) for six-track album.
Genre: Surf. Instrumentals.
Links:
THE LOST SESSIONS
The Vulcanos on Bandcamp
The Vulcanos on Bandcamp
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
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
Local news is getting sloppy - saw 2 different stations cover the Long Beach Grand Prix using stock footage with 'Toyota Long Beach Grand Prix' banners, but
currently, the race is bankrolled by Honda, called the Acura Long Beach Grand Prix, and banners have been up for weeks.
FWIW, race headquarters is across the street from the laundromat-of-the-darned.
Jeopardy Champion
Matt Amodio
Answer: The third Jeopardy contestant to earn more than $1 million during a winning streak.
The question there would be who is (or "what's," as he would say) Matt Amodio, who broke the $1 million barrier with his 28th victory on the quiz show on Friday. His $48,800 winnings on the episode brought his total prize money to $1,004,001.
"This was beyond my wildest dreams going in," Amodio said in a statement. "I knew it was a possibility, but I thought it was a very remote possibility, and to have it actually happen is unbelievable."
Amodio, a Ph.D. student at Yale, is only the third contestant in Jeopardy history to earn more than $1 million during regular-season play, the first two being official show GOATs Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer. (Both won over $2 million during their 74-game and 32-game winning streaks, respectively.) However, Brad Rutter, who faced Jennings and Holzhauer in 2020's Greatest of All Time tournament, remains the highest-winning Jeopardy contestant ever, with nearly $5 million amassed across various tournaments. (During Rutter's 2000 winning streak on the show, champions were limited to five-day runs, after which they would "retire undefeated.")
With 28 wins under his belt, Amodio is poised to surpass Holzhauer's 32-game winning streak next week. He has a long way to go to pass the high-rolling champion's total, however; Holzhauer, a professional sports gambler, won over $2.4 million and averaged $75,362 per game during his 2019 run on the show. (Amodio, a far more conservative wagerer than Holzhauer, has averaged $34,114 per game so far, according to the fan site J! Archive.)
Matt Amodio
Bidding War
Hollywood
Hollywood players are falling over themselves in the hopes of landing a new movie package featuring the “Ocean’s 11” team of George Clooney and Brad Pitt, who will reunite under the watchful eye of “Spider-Man: Homecoming” director Jon Watts. According to the Hollywood Reporter, which broke the news, the package has drawn interest from a cavalcade of would-be buyers including Lionsgate, Apple, Sony, Netflix, Universal, Amazon, Annapurna and Warner Bros. Phew.
It’s not hard to see why everyone is breaking out their checkbooks — two A-listers + hot director = box office winner/streaming standout. The deal calls for Watts to write, direct and produce the film with Clooney and Pitt sliding into the lead roles. Their production labels, Clooney’s Smokehouse Pictures and Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment, will produce the picture.
Plot details, scant as they are, are being guarded like the Hope Diamond. Here’s what we do know. Apparently the film with focus on two fixers who get the same gig.
In addition to their work in the “Ocean’s 11” franchise, both Pitt and Clooney re-teamed for the Coen brothers’ “Burn After Reading.” Pitt is fresh off an Oscar win for “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” Clooney is directing Ben Affleck and Tye Sheridan in this fall’s “The Tender Bar.” Watts has directed all three of the most recent Spider-Man films. His latest entry, “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” debuts this winter.
Hollywood
Goes Fur Free
Saint Laurent
French luxury house Saint Laurent will go completely fur free in its collections from next year, its parent company Kering said Friday.
In a statement, Kering added that another of its houses, Italian menswear brand Brioni, will also stop using natural fur -- making the luxury giant that includes Gucci, Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta completely fur free.
Kering CEO Francois-Henri Pinault (Mr. Salma Hayek) said that “going entirely fur free is just the right thing to do. We do it out of conviction, for the sake of ethics and modernity.”
Animal rights groups have long pushed for luxury houses to stop using fur. Many in Paris, such as Stella McCartney and Chanel, had already renounced it in recent years. Welcoming Friday’s move, rights group Humane Society International said that it “puts pressure on the few remaining fashion brands that continue to sell fur to follow suit.”
Saint Laurent
World’s Most Hated
Fast Food Chains
As much as we love best-of lists, it’s hard not to be fascinated with worst-of lists, too. They appeal to my innate fascination with people’s preferences—especially if those preferences don’t line up with my own. Along those lines, online review hub RAVE Reviews has released data on the most-hated brands in the world. There’s a whole section dedicated to the most-hated fast food brands in every country, and you just know it caught our eye.
Rave Reviews used SentiStrength, a language analysis tool, to scan over a million brand-related tweets and determine whether the overall sentiment toward those brands was negative or positive. RAVE Reviews then compiled the most loathed brands in every country based on “hate rate,” or the highest percentage of negative tweets. (By the way, this is non-food related, but Uber was the most hated brand overall in the United States, at 48.35% negative tweets. Just... something to consider.)
Russia hates Starbucks (58.33% negative tweets), Mexico hates Taco Bell (30% negative tweets), and South Africa hates Wendy’s (46.74% haters on Twitter). I mean, Wendy’s is fine, but I wouldn’t call it the worst. Even though its new fries are lackluster.
Okay, okay, I won’t leave you hanging: The most hated fast food brand in the United States is... Domino’s. The pizza chain came in at 39.16% negative tweets. Does that seem surprising to you, too? Domino’s is more or less in the “okay” category in my head. I assumed Burger King or another burger chain would get the shaft, since burgers can swing so far between amazing and terrible.
And the fast food joint most hated around the world is KFC, with the highest hate rate in 14 countries. This might be partially due to the fact that KFC has simply been an established global brand for so long. KFC opened outlets in China years before McDonald’s did, after all, and in many countries KFC locations vastly outnumber other major American fast food brands. But who knows? Maybe KFC’s hate rate is so high because... it’s KFC.
Fast Food Chains
FBI Informant
Jan. 6
As scores of Proud Boys made their way, chanting and shouting, toward the Capitol on Jan. 6, one member of the far-right group was busy texting a real-time account of the march.
In the middle of an unfolding melee that shook a pillar of American democracy — the peaceful transfer of power — the bureau had an informant in the crowd, providing an inside glimpse of the action, according to confidential records obtained by The New York Times. In the informant’s version of events, the Proud Boys, famous for their street fights, were largely following a pro-Trump mob consumed by a herd mentality rather than carrying out any type of preplanned attack.
After meeting his fellow Proud Boys at the Washington Monument that morning, the informant described his path to the Capitol grounds, where he saw barriers knocked down and Trump supporters streaming into the building, the records show. At one point, his handler appeared not to grasp that the building had been breached, the records show, and asked the informant to keep him in the loop — especially if there was any violence.
The use of informants always presents law enforcement officials with difficult judgments about the credibility and completeness of the information they provide. In this case, the records obtained by The Times do not directly address whether the informant was in a good position to know about plans developed for Jan. 6 by the leadership of the Proud Boys, why he was cooperating, whether he could have missed indications of a plot or whether he could have deliberately misled the government.
But the records, and information from two people familiar with the matter, suggest that federal law enforcement had a far greater visibility into the assault on the Capitol, even as it was taking place, than was previously known.
Jan. 6
Hack
Epik
Data from the Epik hack leak reveals subpoenas and preservation requests directed to the company for information about some of its customers, apparently issued in the wake of Jan. 6.
Data leaked online from the hack of web hosting company Epik appears to reveal domains of interest to investigations or other court proceedings. Some of the requests for records came in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
The hacking collective Anonymous last week took credit for breaching the domain registrar, best known for hosting some of the far-right’s most notorious websites.
Epik CEO Rob Monster confirmed the breach last Friday in a bizarre, four-hour-long live video conference which was ultimately overrun by hackers, trolls, upset customers, and even a neo-Nazi.
The leak has also shed light on the activities of several prominent far-right customers of Epik, such as “Stop the Steal” founder Ali Alexander, who attempted to hide his digital ties to dozens of domains related to the Jan. 6 rally at the Capitol via a service Epik provides to anonymize the owners of websites.
Epik
Invasion Of Wild Boars
Rome
Rome has been invaded by Gauls, Visigoths and vandals over the centuries, but the Eternal City is now grappling with a rampaging force of an entirely different sort: rubbish-seeking wild boars.
Entire families of wild boars have become a daily sight in Rome, as groups of 10-30 beasts young and old emerge from the vast parks surrounding the city to trot down traffic-clogged streets in search of food in Rome’s notoriously overflowing rubbish bins.
Posting wild boar videos on social media has become something of a sport as exasperated Romans capture the scavengers marching past their stores, strollers or playgrounds.
As Rome gears up for a local election next weekend, the wild boar invasion has been used as a political weapon to attack Mayor Virginia Raggi over the city’s formidable garbage collection problems. But experts say the issue is more complicated and tied at least in part to a booming boar population.
Italy's main agriculture lobby, Coldiretti, estimates there are over 2 million wild boars in Italy. The region of Lazio surrounding Rome estimates there are 5,000-6,000 of them in city parks, a few hundred of which regularly abandon the trees and green for urban asphalt and trash bins.
Rome
Found A Way
Beetle Mite
Let's face it. Sex isn't always worth the effort. For many animals, the whole mating game is so inconvenient, going it alone and reproducing asexually is the best option.
As appealing as it might sound, however, evolution puts a heavy price on a population that gives up sex for too long. Sooner or later, a eukaryotic species will either need to swap chromosomes in a DNA shake-up that increases genetic variation, or risk fading into extinction.
That's the rule, at least – but the beetle mite (Oppiella nova) is having none of it.
By comparing its genome with that of its sexually active cousin, O. subpectinata, a team of researchers from across Europe has found that this micrometer-sized arthropod has been doing quite all right living a chaste lifestyle for... millions of years.
Swapping chromosomes and subjecting them to a bit of mix-and-match every now and then helps give a population a diverse choice in genetic combinations, meaning when catastrophe strikes – be it a plague, a temperature change, or introduction of a new predator – there's bound to be at least a few individuals that will cope.
Beetle Mite
Treasure Trove Of Gold Coins
Xàbia, Spain
Freedivers off the coast of Spain have uncovered a treasure trove of 53 perfectly preserved gold coins from the Roman Empire, one of the largest collections ever found in Europe.
Brothers-in-law Luis Lens and César Gimeno were freediving in the Mediterranean Sea while on vacation in Xàbia, Spain. Cleaning up trash, according to The Times, as they explored the underwater scenery they came across a shiny object that resembled a "10-cent-coin," newspaper El Pais said.
Using the corkscrew of a Swiss Army knife, they discovered another seven coins embedded in a rock crevice.
After reporting their discovery to local authorities, a team of scuba divers and archaeologists uncovered a total of 53 gold coins, three nails, and some remains of what appeared to be a chest.
Researchers were able to identify the emperors on the coins: Valentinian I (3 coins), Valentinian II (7 coins), Todosio I (15 coins), Arcadi (17 coins), Honorius (10 coins), and an unidentified coin.
Xàbia, Spain
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