from Bruce
Anecdotes
Fame
• Comedian Gracie Allen became so famous that whenever she went out in public, autograph seekers surrounded her. At the height of her celebrity, Gracie was accompanied in public by a person who watched the crowd of people surrounding her. Whenever the crowd became too large, the person would loudly say, “I’m sorry, Miss Allen, but you have to leave right now. They’re waiting for you at the studio.”
Fans
• USAmericans sometimes have a wonderful sense of humor. For example, many of us older men wonder what it would be like to be Cary Grant for a few days. (For you younger people, Cary Grant was the Brad Pitt of his day.) Comic songwriter Allan Sherman (writer of “Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh”), a short, stocky man, actually got the chance to be Cary Grant. As the guest host of The Tonight Show (back when Johnny Carson was king of late nights), Mr. Sherman told the television audience at the beginning of his week as guest host that he wanted to be Cary Grant for a week. During the next few days, hundreds of people asked Mr. Sherman for Cary Grant’s autograph, which Mr. Sherman signed for them. In addition, the post office delivered to Mr. Sherman thousands of letters addressed to “Cary Grant, New York City,” and a model stopped Mr. Sherman on the street and told him, “You look much younger in person, Mr. Grant.”
• Of course, TV stars run into problems that non-celebrities don’t. One problem is that the viewers of TV programs tend to think that they know a character on TV rather than understanding that they are watching an actor portraying a character. Michael Urie plays a gay character on TV’s Ugly Betty, and many, many people like the character. While he and his family were vacationing in Yosemite, he heard a woman yell, “Ahh! I love you! I love you!” — then she came over and hugged him. Mr. Urie says, “It’s pretty awkward sometimes. It’s like oh, my god, I don’t know you, but they come up to you with this look. For the first several months when that would happen, I just assumed I did know them, because they seemed to know me so well. I’ve gotten a little more accustomed to it.”
• Lionel Barrymore was a big fan of the 1950s children’s TV show Time for Beany, featuring “Uncle Captain” Huffenpuff and Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent. One day, he was hurrying home to try to make it in time to see Time for Beany. When he knew that he wouldn’t make it in time, he had his chauffeur pull over at a house with a TV antenna, then ask the family if he, the chauffeur, could watch Time for Beany. (Mr. Barrymore would have watched it, but he was in a wheelchair in those days.) After the show was over, Mr. Barrymore made his chauffeur tell him — in detail — what had happened on the show.
• TV critic Anne Billson longed for strong female, action-oriented role models when she was growing up. Fortunately, she found one in Emma Peel, John Steed’s equal in the British cult TV series The Avengers. Emma Peel was played by Diana Rigg, whom 30 years later Ms. Billson met in a line for the women’s lavatories. Like so many fans do, Ms. Billson blurted out, “You were my role model!” Ms. Rigg graciously replied, “Why, thank you,” then Ms. Billson added, “And you still are.”
• Filmmaker John Waters was a huge fan of an old TV program titled Lie Detector, which starred F. Lee Bailey and which featured criminals claiming to be innocent and taking lie detector tests. One of Mr. Waters’ friends was chosen to tell the Nielsen ratings people what shows he watched. Since Mr. Waters liked the program so much, he paid his friend to lie and record in his Nielsen diary that he watched the program. Unfortunately, this attempt to boost the program’s ratings failed and Lie Detector was cancelled.
• Many gay men love The Mary Tyler Moore Show, whose lead character, Mary Richards, had a big “M” hanging on the wall of her apartment. (When the series was over, everyone associated with the show took an item from Ms. Richards’ apartment as a memento; Ms. Moore took the M.) In fact, one gay interior decorator insists on hanging a big “M” on a wall of each home he decorates.
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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.
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Music: "I Smell The Fear, I Feel The Pain"
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Reader Comment
Current Events
Reality show
THIS is a reality show I would watch! Wonder if anyone would be alive at the end of if they would just consume themselves and disappear in a ball of rage:
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Nice steady rain overnight.
Ephemera Hits Auction Block
Ricky Jay
Conjurers, cheats, hustlers, hoaxsters, pranksters, jokesters, posturers, pretenders, sideshow showmen, armless calligraphers, mechanical marvels and popular entertainments.
Those were the things that interested the grizzled Ricky Jay, the sleight-of-hand artist, card shark, author, actor and scholar extraordinaire on all of the above who died in 2018 at age 72. When he passed, he left behind a vast trove of rare books, posters, broadsides and other artifacts that honored many who came before him.
Now, nearly 2,000 of more than 10,000 pieces that stuffed his Beverly Hill’s house will make their way into the hands of those who care to bid during an unusual upcoming Sotheby’s auction after Jay’s widow, the Emmy-winning producer Chrisann Verges, turned them over.
Divided into 634 lots, Sotheby’s estimates the collection at $2.2 million to $3.2 million, hoping for bidders from those inside Jay’s world, magic admirers from afar and art enthusiasts on the hunt to decorate their walls. There’s more than enough to choose from.
Jay was Brooklyn born as Richard Jay Potash and grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He rarely spoke publicly about his parents but was introduced to magic by a grandfather, an amateur enthusiast who encouraged Jay to take to the stage and screen as a boy wonder. His first TV appearance was at age 7. By his 20s, a long-haired Jay was on his way to stardom, opening for rock bands and appearing on talk shows.
Ricky Jay
Bullied By Paparazzi
Michael J. Fox
Michael J. Fox is reflecting on the pressure he felt to reveal his health condition to the world and how it surprisingly became a "great opportunity."
The 60-year-old Emmy-winning actor recently spoke with Entertainment Tonight and discussed how his treatment from the paparazzi played a role in his decision to share publicly — several years after his diagnosis — that he was living with Parkinson's disease.
"It was seven or eight years after I had been diagnosed ... [and] the paparazzi and stuff, they would stand outside my apartment and heckle at me, like, 'What's the matter with you?' " Fox recalled. "I said, 'I can't be making my neighbors deal with this,' so I came out, and it was great. It was a great thing."
Fox was first diagnosed with Parkinson's, a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system, in 1991 and later went public with his diagnosis in 1998. Despite feeling pressure to reveal his condition, the former Back to the Future star said he used his experience as an opportunity to teach others about the disease.
"It was a great surprise to me that people responded the way they responded," Fox continued. "They responded with interest, in the desire to find an answer to the disease, and then I saw that as a great opportunity. I didn't get put in this position to squander it."
Michael J. Fox
Reunited With Lost Credit Card
Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford lost his credit card during a stay in a beach town near Palermo, Sicily, but got it back thanks to a German tourist, police in Sicily said Saturday.
The tourist found a credit card with Ford’s name emblazoned on it Thursday, and turned it in to the local police station in the beach town of Mondello. Officers tracked the actor down and returned the card, police said. It wasn’t clear if the actor was aware that the card had been missing.
Italian media published a photo of the smiling actor wearing a T-shirt and what appears to be bathing trunks, holding the card up for the camera alongside two officers and the local commander.
Mondello, separated from Palermo by a the 700-meter (2,300-foot) tall Montepellegrino, is known for its long sandy beach and Liberty style villas.
Harrison Ford
Summoned To Testify
Richard Gere
Hollywood star Richard Gere has been summoned to testify as Italy's former interior minister and far-right leader Matteo Salvini went on trial Saturday for allegedly illegally blocking over 100 migrants in dire sanitary conditions from disembarking from a rescue ship in 2019.
On the opening day of the trial in Palermo, Judge Roberto Murgia said all the witnesses submitted by the parties would be allowed to testify, including Gere -- who made a humanitarian visit to the ship -- and Italy's former prime minister Giuseppe Conte.
Salvini, the leader of the far-right League party who is known for an "Italians first" policy, is charged with kidnapping and abuse of office for using his position as interior minister to detain the 147 migrants at sea in August 2019.
In a tweet referencing Gere, Salvini said he was "proud of having done my duty and defending the borders!"
Salvini has said he was protecting Italy with his "closed ports" policy aimed at stopping people attempting the dangerous Mediterranean crossing.
Richard Gere
Bronx Elephant
Happy
On a sunny September afternoon, Happy is standing just a few feet away from the monorail at the Bronx Zoo. Her ears flap as she wraps her trunk around a fence that separates her from the slow-moving train. There are no other barriers between them, not even plexiglass, so it’s no wonder why a child screeches in delight as the 51-year-old female Asian elephant comes into view. This is the only place in New York City and just one of roughly 57 accredited zoos in the U.S. where you can see an elephant. And with only about an estimated 50,000 Asian elephants left in the wild, according to conservationists, the chance of seeing the endangered species at all dwindles each year it faces poaching and other threats.
But for plaintiffs in a landmark legal case to free Happy, there’s no marvel to be found below the monorail; there’s only misery to witness the half-life of an elephant—specifically one who has indicated to researchers that she’s self-aware. An online petition shows that more than 1.4 million people believe Happy is languishing in isolation at the zoo, where she’s gawked at from May through October for the $40 price of adult admission with unlimited rides.
“It’s kind of like looking at a prisoner, and you get to ride over someone who’s in solitary confinement,” says Steven Wise, president of the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), the animal-rights group leading the lawsuit. “We understand what her life means to her, which is almost nothing at all.”
Against the Bronx Zoo’s wishes, the NhRP wants to move Happy to an elephant sanctuary either in Tennessee or California, where there’s more space and opportunity to socialize. To do that, the activists are relying on the writ of habeas corpus, a legal protection for imprisoned people. In 2022, the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, will hear the first argument ever made in the nation that such protections should be extended to an animal.
Experts say Happy’s case is larger than any one pachyderm. If the NhRP is victorious, it says it would seek to end all elephant exhibits in zoos across the country, believing their efforts would save the complex creatures from stunted lives in captivity. But zoo leaders warn that such a move would have dire consequences for new generations of children and for the future of conservation, as climate change wipes more species off the planet.
Happy
Recognized Legally As People In US
Cocaine Hippos
In a US first, the district court has recognized animals as legal people for the first time, and of course, it’s Pablo Escobar’s infamous “cocaine hippos”.
The historic ruling by the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio on October 15 recognizes the hippos as the first non-human creatures to be legally considered people in the US.
If you have questions about what, or should that be who, a cocaine hippo is, let’s do a brief recap: Infamous drug kingpin Pablo Escobar smuggled dozens of exotic zoo animals onto his private ranch in Colombia in the 1980s, including four hippos. After he was killed in 1993 by police, most of the animals were shipped off to zoos, except for the hippos that proved so difficult to capture the police left them on the land thinking the African native creatures would probably die. Instead, they started breeding prolifically.
Thirty years later, the 120-strong population roam Colombia and are considered one of the top invasive species in the world. The government and scientists have been considering their fate for years. Conservationists are concerned about the ecological damage they are doing to Colombia’s Magdalena River basin, while others have used them to make the case for invasive species.
The lawsuit to save the hippos argues for the use of another contraceptive drug, and that the deal could still allow for a loophole for some of the hippos to be killed. So the US Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) stepped in, filing a legal application to depose two Ohio-based nonsurgical sterilization wildlife experts to testify on behalf of the plaintiffs – to be clear, the hippos.
Cocaine Hippos
‘I was terrified’: the vet sterilizing Pablo Escobar’s cocaine hippos
Release Delayed
JFK Assassination Files
The White House said Friday it would delay the release of long-classified documents related to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy. President Joe Biden wrote in a statement that the remaining files "shall be withheld from full public disclosure" until December 15 next year -- nearly 60 years after Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas in 1963.
In 2017, former president Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up) released several thousand secret files on the assassination, but withheld others on national security grounds.
The White House said the national archivist needs more time for a review into that redaction, which was slowed by the pandemic.
Mr. Biden also said the delay was "necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations" and that this "outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure."
JFK Assassination Files
Get Bushier With Age
Men's Eyebrows
Some older men's enormous eyebrows, extensive ear hair and substantial sniffer strands seem like they never stop growing. While many men lose the hair atop their heads, others' eyebrow, ear and nose hairs may look as if they've been dipped in a magical growing elixir.
In contrast, women's hair, including their eyebrows, tend to thin as they age. So why do men's various facial hairs often get bushier in old age, while women's don't?
Older men's hairiness are influenced by high hormone levels — namely, testosterone — through to old age. These hormones have greater effects on the hair follicles over time, according to Dr. Danilo Del Campo, a dermatologist at the Chicago Skin Clinic. Meanwhile, the hormone estrogen, which increases hair growth and diameter, tends to decrease in women after menopause, according to a 2020 review in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
However, where hair grows, how fast it grows, and its texture and color are based primarily on genetics, age, nutrition, health and sex, said Dr. Marie Jhin, president of Premier Dermatology in San Carlos, California.
All hairs on the body grow from hair follicles. These follicles' life cycles have three phases: the growth phase (anagen), the two-week transition phase (catagen) and the months-long dormant phase (telogen). After hair follicles go dormant, the hair eventually falls out — sometimes called the exogen phase, according to the 2020 review. The process then starts over at the anagen phase.
Men's Eyebrows
Karma Calls, Again
Kruger National Park
An elephant has trampled a suspected poacher to death in South Africa's famed Kruger National Park, a spokesman said Friday. The mangled body was discovered Thursday during an intelligence operation aimed at preventing poaching, Kruger spokesman Isaac Phaahla told AFP.
"Initial investigations suspect that the deceased was killed by an elephant and left behind by his accomplices," he added.
The elephant spared the man's cell phone, which rangers have turned over to police to aid their efforts to track down his fellow poachers, he said.
Earlier this year, another suspected poacher was trampled and killed by a herd of elephants at the park. And in 2019, a suspected rhino poacher in was killed by an elephant before his body was apparently eaten by lions at the park.
Kruger National Park
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